A New Year: New Opportunities And Fresh Starts

So, what did we achieve at Corporate Rebels? Among many other initiatives, these are some of our main achievements in 2022:

Audience

First of all, and most importantly, we significantly grew the impact of our work. We have now published over 500+ articles on our blog, grown our semi-weekly newsletter to 50K+ subscribers, and increased the size of our readership to an audience of 2M+ people.

Moreover, next to our English version of our blog, we have recently teamed up with Yuji Yamada to launch a Japanese version of our blog. This means many of our stories are now available to the Japanese public as well.

Books

In 2020, we published our first book, Corporate Rebels. Since its publication, it has been translated into nine languages. Recently, we launched the newest translation of our original book, the Chinese version, with Tsinghua University Press.

Last year, we also published our second book, Start-up Factory, an extensive case-study about the Chinese manufacturer Haier.

Business schools

Publishing articles and books was not the only thing we did in 2022. We also started working closely with professors from the world’s leading business schools to develop new teaching cases for their students.

In March 2022, we published an INSEAD teaching case titled Haier with Michael Y. Lee & Wesley Yu-Ki Koo from the INSEAD Business School.

More recently, in October 2022, we published an HBS teaching case titled Buurtzorg with Ethan Bernstein, Tatiana Sandino & Annelena Lobb from the Harvard Business School.

Corporate Rebels Academy

Most of our efforts last year focused on taking our own online learning platform to the next level of development to become a vibrant place to train, connect, and support those looking to radically redesign their companies.

This learning platform, Corporate Rebels Academy, consists of two main elements: an online community where like-minded people can learn directly from each other and online courses and masterclasses where people can learn from the world’s best workplace pioneers.

Corporate Rebels Academy’s community

Last year, we welcomed hundreds of new members to our platform after we decided to offer yearly subscriptions to individuals, teams, and entire organizations.

Our primary focus is providing powerful ammunition to transformation leaders so they can battle the status quo in their workplaces.

However, we also focus our effort on inspiring future change-makers. For example, Harvard Business School is now using our platform and courses as a part of its learning experience.

Corporate Rebels Academy’s on-demand courses

Over the last few months, we have developed and launched a completely new series of on-demand courses on organizational practices alongside entire case studies about progressive organizations.

We develop all of our courses in close collaboration with some of the world’s most pioneering firms. To give you a sense of what you can expect to learn on our platform, here are examples of the courses:

• Make Better Decisions: Ditch Boring Meetings (and Replace Them with Fun and Engaging Ones)
• Run Better Meetings: Distribute Decision-making for Better and Quicker Decisions
• Handle Conflicts Better: Turn Conflicts into Opportunities in a Graceful, Mature Way
• Distribute Work into Autonomous Roles: Divide Work into Roles to Boost Autonomy and Entrepreneurship
• How Buurtzorg Works: A Radical Case Study on Self-Management at Scale
• How NER works: a Case Study about a Highly Successful Self-Management Model
• How Viisi works: A Case Study in Going Beyond Holacracy
• How Haier works: A Case Study on Busting Bureaucracy and Unleashing Entrepreneurship

Corporate Rebels Academy’s masterclasses

In addition to launching new on-demand courses last year, we again ran several cohort-based masterclasses that focus on understanding and designing progressive organizational structures.

These immersive, six-week online masterclasses—with a maximum group of 20 peers—combine the best of a live and on-demand learning experience.

On-demand content is presented in video, animation, text, and homework that can be studied whenever the attendant has the time to do so.

Additionally, semi-weekly live sessions with workplace pioneers boost learning by reflecting, discussing, and interacting with fellow classmates, along with live Q&A sessions with pioneers from around the world.

In these masterclasses, we help people learn about progressive organizations by exploring several case studies of the world’s most pioneering organizations (including Buurtzorg, Viisi, Haier, and NER Group) and help them apply the lessons they learn to their own (or their client's) organizations.

Client work

2022 also saw us continue to share everything we have learned at various conferences, company off-sites, and other events around the world. We also still actively guide several companies in their quest to radically overhaul their traditional organizational structures.

We now work with clients from all over the world, from Australia to Asia and Europe to America. Also of note: we saw a remarkably large number of requests from Asian-based companies, which was certainly exciting.

Krisos

Last but not least, and probably the boldest move we have made so far, we established Krisos, a venture aimed at facilitating a transition towards more humane organizations.

With the venture, we buy struggling SME businesses that would benefit from transforming to a progressive way of working. We radically transform the acquired businesses into more engaging workplaces.

We do so by reducing hierarchy, implementing self-management, creating more equality, introducing radical transparency, sharing profits, and distributing decision-making.

As a result, we end up with more humane companies boasting higher engagement, higher productivity, lower absenteeism, higher salaries, and more profit.

When selling the company, we aim to move it into a steward-ownership structure to ensure sustainability, independence, and long-term purpose.

To buy these companies, we solely work with investors who believe it makes good business and social sense to transform companies into a force for good.

2023

Although there is still plenty of work to do involving all the initiatives mentioned above, we will hit the new year with plenty of rebelliousness and ambition. So, get ready for an action-packed 2023 from our side.

Not only are we launching an entirely new website (more to announce here very soon), but we will also be announcing several important partnerships and expanding our amazing team.

Moreover, there are several other important achievements still in the pipeline:

• We will be onboarding many new members to our Corporate Rebels Academy.. Moreover, we will develop and launch new on-demand courses on our platform covering workplace practices such as Psychological Safety, Feedback, and Team Handbooks. We will also launch a course focused on transformations developed by Jochen Goeser & Carmen Knippenberg. The course will feature in-depth content about their transformation work at Bosch Power Tools..
• We will again run new cohorts of our six-week masterclasses focused on understanding and designing progressive organizational structures. So, if you want to make 2023 your most rebellious year so far, make sure to join one of our upcoming classes to become the transformation leader your company desperately needs.
• And, finally, we are working on a new book. Yes, another book. But we’ll tell you more about that later this year…

Okay, time to wrap up this piece. I would like to end with a word of appreciation: we genuinely thank all of you for your support.

Thanks for reading and sharing our articles, books, and other content. Thanks for trying to make the world of work a better place for everyone.

Thanks for believing in our mission. After all, this movement only works if others join us; we are pleased to say you have. And we appreciate it more than we can convey.

Let's make 2023 the year we make work more fun!