Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Monkey Business Book Project

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

This idea has been in my head for while in some forms and it ignited again when me, Petrus, Liher, Ola and Rogerio where driving back from the excellent Art of Hosting training in Karlskrona that brought together people from Kaospilots, MSLS and Team Academy. See Liher’s post about it here.

Ever since our flight back from SoL Global forum in Oman me and Tatu have been talking about writing a book. In fact, back then we did actually come up with a loads of different ideas. The basic idea was to make an inspiring book with stories, theories, quotes and pictures. We were inspired a lot by Paul Arden, Seth Godin and Tom Peters.

Empty page
Empty page

Well, time goes on and the idea develops and we are lazy to write the book. And we keep on printing out more Monkey Business notebooks. And the idea comes up when we are somewhere about 200km from Stockholm. Let’s make a Monkey Business notebook version 2.0 where people could send their own ideas, drawings, illustrations, theories, quotations and so on whatever they have put in their Monkey Business notebooks. So it would be a mash-up notebook. Still with loads of room to write your own things in but with some text already there at the bottom of some pages, or a big drawing on the other or something totally different.

DSC_8343

Idea is to get this book out by June 2010. We need your help. Please, send us pictures of your notebook’s pages with something on them. We will give them to a designer and eventually print some of them into the new version of Monkey Business notebook. You’ll be accredited for your contribution and also get a copy for yourself before they go for sale in public. The deadline for submissions is 31st of March. Then we will give the material to a graphic designer who will put it all together.

I am very curious to see what kind of book we can create together. All questions, contributions, ideas are most welcome! Ville Monkey

Ps. If you want the version 1.0 Monkey Notebooks we still got some left. 12 euros including mailing. They are good for your thinking.

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Posted in Books, Monkey Business, Travelling | No Comments »

How Do We Think?

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Just found this cool video on Facebook through Innovandis & Asier of Funky Projects.

Has anybody read the book We Think by Charles Leadbeater? What do you think about it? Yellow mellow, Ville

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Posted in Books, Monkey Business, Video | 3 Comments »

Richard St. John’s 8 Secrets of Success

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Today we heard from a potential partner that “you should delete your webpage” and get some concrete going on. Also we should get “some more meat around the bone”. Whuh. Heavy stuff. At the same time he cancelled our meeting planned for Thursday morning. Well, we kind of had a feeling that this may be a tricky partnership but still the reaction from him was little surprising.

Anyways, it was about time to hear some negative comments because Tom Peters on his book Project50 says something like this: “Think sometimes if you have pissed off people lately, because if you haven’t, then you are either not working hard enough or not being radical enough.”

And this is what also Jari Parantainen says in his Finnish blog that we need not to be afraid to divide people into two groups because if we get haters then we also got lovers.

Furthermore, practically the same thing from Guy Kawasaki: Do not be afraid to polarize people (point no. 4 in his post about the Art of Innovation).

The third similar minded comment is in this excellent and inspiring TED video by Richard St. John. This is actually what I wanted to share in the beginning. See the video below.

He says that one secret of success is persistence. He says that if we want to succeed we need to persist CRAP – which stands for Critisism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure.

And this is what we say when people ask us about the marketing: Be brave, dare to make marketing that may piss off people. But I have to admit, that when the guy calls you and tells you to delete your website and get some more experience, it doesn’t feel good and kind of it puts me down. Anyways, I am happy to know we got loads of supporters out there and this is probably just one guy, who didn’t get what this Monkey Business is all about, maybe?

Keep it yellow everyone! Peace, Ville

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Posted in Books, Marketing, Monkey Business, Video | 2 Comments »

What´s cooking Linus?

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Our campaign for January is wild as a Jungle and beating like a drum. Order one monkey now – and get second for free! Two monkeys for the price of one! Double amount of action, chaos and mistakes means at least six times more of learning. Maybe? Choose your Monkeys here: MonkeyBusiness_pres (Great profiles made by Nic. THANKS!)

We are supporters of fundamental freedom. Everyone is able to achieve what ever in the world – if you don´t mind who gets the honour. Pekka Himanen´s book, The Hacker Ethic, has had a lot influence to our Ideology. Passion and dedication to that, building on enthusiasm will carry on. So how can we encourage people on that? More listening to heart than rational mind? How do we help people to join enriching communities? How do we help people to find out who they really are? And what are they really passionate obout? And what is their strenght, superpower that they should build on? How do we help individuals to lead theirselves?

Linus Thorvalds created source code of Linux and story goes on. What is source code of Monkey Business? The DNA that people monkeying around are sharing? Do you feel the call?

 

Tantourist.

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Posted in Books, Friends of Monkey Business, Monkey Business | 1 Comment »

Christmas Calendar Day 15: Experience Economy

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Lately I have heard couple of times about the challenge when the basic production in Finland just is not sustainable financially anymore. We simply cannot compete with cheaper labor of Eastern Europe or the hard working, little paid Asia. Unless our culture will change radically we have to be prepared to say: “So long basic production, so long.”

So in how deep s**t are we? Is there anything we could do? Can we build a national survival strategy? Where to start?

I am not sure, but I thought I should present you one idea that could help in some cases. Close your eyes, and think for a moment, what could it be. I put a picture here so you can really do it. Maybe have a glass of water before reading further.

Eelovi

Little competition here, who’s design is that candle holder in this picture?

So, what I think could be a one part of the solution is what Pine & Gilmore calls the experience economy. It can be coined to 5E’s: Education, Escapism, Entertainment, Esthetics and Espirit of de Organization. The Last one is addition by Johannes Partanen. See an image below.

Experience Economy

Maybe the latest phenomenon that I explained through this theory is the books by Dan Brown. I haven’t read any yet but thanks to the launch of the new book he has been on the newspapers in Finland. This is what I imagine of his books. They are educative – when reading you “learn” about history, religion, symbols etc. They are also engaging and thus escapist, you forget the time and place and concentrate only on the book. It’s good entertainment, time passes and can be fun, even talking with your friends about the book. Esthetics; the books are located in cool places, Rome and Washington DC for example. Esprit of Dan Brown – Well, I guess that’s the style of his writing. Maybe someone who has read something by him could comment on this?

And one thing to say here is that Experience is always personal, though many times when it’s collective it enhances it. But everyone has their unique way of experiencing. See a good post about experiencing in here.

So how can Dan Brown help to keep the industry in Finland? What do you think? Do I need to chew the banana more or does this park your creativity?

Ville Monkey

Ps. One of the paradoxes of Dialogue in my opinion are that you need to speak from the heart and voice your opinions, ideas and inquiry directly but you shouldn’t chew the bananas ready for others. Sometimes the line between those two is hard to define. Well, to put it simply, speak from the heart but don’t chew the banana for others. Mystery is part of marketing. Did I chew it too much by saying that?

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Posted in Books, Christmas Calendar, Cool and Important, Short Article | 3 Comments »

Letter to Erlend Loe

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Hi fellows!

All the Monkeys read couple months ago Erlend Loes books Supernaiiv and Doppler. Somehow those books started a deep and really various conversations among us. Some one were a repressed and someones were really exited about those books. We got a good conversations about that why everybody react the way they did. Because of that we all know each others better and also ourselves, I think. We got a bunch of encouraging of what we are doing, we are the right way about our yellow business and our values are worthy to take care of.

Johanna with big a smile.

Yellow, playful and sincere,

Johanna

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Posted in Books, Cool and Important, Friends of Monkey Business, Monkey Business, Short Article | No Comments »

Book recommendation from Iceland

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Inspired by the cool and tough Iceland I am bringing you a fresh book recommendation. This time it is from my friend, Shinsaku who’s a scholar in environmental studies and eager nature-man, just like the monkeys. Shinsaku says:

Have you read Thomas Homer-Dixon’s “Upside of Down“? it’s a very good book. Not a novel. I’m sure you heard of Resilience or Panarchy and things like that. They are and are going to be very important new paradigms and everyone on earth should know it. anyhow this book explains and put theory in context well. well-written as well.

I first of heard of the word resilience in the SoL European Sustainability Groups event in Scotland at Meadowhead. There was a man called Nick Wielding who nowadays works for CarnegieUK Trust. They’ve published an interesting looking report called A Manifesto for Rural Communities – Inspiring Community Innovation. Be sure to check that our as well.

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Book of the week in Nordic / Scandinavian spirit!

Friday, November 6th, 2009

H0op! On Sunday 3 Monkeys will go to Iceland to the magnific LAVA09 event presented below, and that makes me feel like happy to be Nordic! Also I feel like fostering our roots and culture here in the north of Europe, and thus, the book recommendation for this week comes from Sweden. Unlike the normal business reading, it’s a novel…bestseller of the Swedish novels in 2005! The book is named Små citroner gula… and in English: A restaurant of yellow lemons.

It’s a sory of young Lady who opens up her own restaurant…and meets the reality of life as a young business owner. Agnes with her partners is giving it all for the initiave, but they face a variety of challenges starting from the customers that write critics into the media and drunken chef as an employee… All could be real, but it’s just a novel…excellent weekend book!

Senac Main Campus

Next week after this relaxing weekend is holding another big journey for Monkeys too. First TA invites 8 people coming from Brazil, England and Barcelona for a Learning Expedition to Team Academy,  and Monkeys are hosting the funnily serious evening program B-) Then after LE Henna Monkey and Sari and Liher from Mondragon Team Academy will go to Brazil to work for opening the Team Academy in there together with a University Senac Sao Paulo. Cool! We are turned on by that challenge and humbly dialoguing for gathering the best knowledge for leading that journey into a success!

Keep it yellow!

Henna Monkey

P.S. Writer of this blog entry is often seriously oriented hard worker, who needs novels to let the brains rest sometimes! If you recognise yourself from this description it’s propably time for you to read a novel too :)

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Posted in Books, Dialogue, Marketing, Monkey Business, Team Academy International Network, Team Coaching, Team Mastery, Travelling, Workshop, facilitation | 4 Comments »

Book Recommendation: One from Many by Dee Hock

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Hiphei Folks!

It’s friday, and it’s time to start a new blog posting series. Every Friday we will bring you a book recommendation. Thanks to Sanna Tossavainen for the idea. And we are going to start with one real “monkeys’ kick-ass-certified” book called “One from Many – VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization”. It’s written by Dee Hock.

Book and Henna

The book was introduced into Team Academy circles by Charles of CoMind couple ears back. Ever since then it’s been highly recommended by Johannes Partanen. Tatu Monkey was very excited after reading it, so was Liher, and I am reading it right now. I have read maybe 30% of the book and here some of my favorite quotes:

“The first and paramount responsibility of anyone who purports to manage is to manage self — One’s own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words, and acts. It’s a never-ending, difficult, oft-shunned task.” (p. 48)

“True leadership presumes standard quite beyond human perfectibility and that is quite alright, for joy and satisfaction are in the pursuit of an objective, not in its realization.” (p. 50)

“Understanding events and influencing the future requires mastering four ways of looking at things; as they were, as they are, as they might become, and as they ought to be.” (p. 91)

Have a good weekend you all, and enjoy the book. I will write more reflection after I have finished the book.

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Posted in Books, Cool and Important, Friends of Monkey Business, Short Article | 2 Comments »