Friends of Monkey Business
Friends of Monkey Business
Travel Agency for Superheroes acts again!
Jun 1st
1 year ago in Quito, Ecuador, while working at local entrepreneurship school and after having coached about the Team Academy in Sao Paulo, Brazil, for University Senac Sao Pauolo & Bank Grupo Santander Brazil, I made a Learning Contract defining that I want to work more with international big companies and surf. This is a post about how the wishes come true. It presents the learnings from a Creative Expedition we did for a group of 20 Marketing & Sales executives of a big French bank Crédit Agricole of in Finland in partnership with Entrepart.
Our relationship with Entrepart and Crédit Agricole dates back to 2007, when I was a teampreneur in Team Academy and we were invited to give a taster of Team Academy for a Crédit Agricole group in Helsinki. I went, together with 3 more teampreneurs, and apparently we succeeded to pitch the case well, because this time CA decided to start their week-long Finnish expedition from Team Academy of Jyväskylä and I had a chance to organize the program for the week as Entrepartner in Finland.
The idea of CA spending a week here in Finland was to do a Translation Nomade, a kind of creative expedition that takes people out of their normal living & experience cycles, and opens up new ways of thinking business. Topic of the week for marketing executives was HR management. We met companies with curious HR aspects, such as Nokia with challenges related to the aim of transforming the engineering business into service business, Docrates Clinique combining Socrates philosophy and doctors, being a unique private cancer Clinique in Nordic Countries and Fujitsu with long cooperation with the National Theatre (meeting took place at the National Theatre). As bankers, our guests were very curious about Finnish banks, and we learned about OP-Pohjola and Sampo, which were both rock’n’roll learning moments with highly interesting peer practice-exchange.
We also discovered the buzzing places of the entrepreneurial wave of Finland in places, such as Team Academy, Design Factory and Korjaamo. Just to give an overview, we were with Demos Helsinki with Manifest of Good Work, Monkey Business as a product of Team Academy joined with Carola Wictorsson and Kaisa Oksanen from the research group of Antti Hautamäki, contributing for creating innovation environments, regionally, Ellun Kanat with a study of Y-generation, STARA with age management program, Outi Ugas from Hahmo presenting the Helsinki World Design Capital 2012 project, Teemu Arina from Dicole talking about the Homo Connectus online, Sulake with Habbos around the globe and Ramine Darabiha with MySites and Aalto Entrepreneurship Society going to Shanghai World Expo on Tracks. In Jyväskylä we also met Stafix with static stickers and most importantly, a 7-nationality team founded by an Ecuadorian, working in Vaajakoski, Jyväskylä, and crushing it worldwide.
Whoah! Lots of meetings! We really had a week full of action and the program covered the Finnish society and landscape pretty comprehensively. “Participants come back with many insights.” said Christian Mayeur, founder of Entrepart on the way back home.
At the last night dinner in Kappeli we dialogued (time for it comes afterwards) and concluded that: In Finland a lot of trust and space is given for the youth, and that creates interesting companies & projects. And what about this well-being, every company promises a package of it for the employee, but what’s the individual responsibility of each own well-being, isn’t there any? Also the area of exact information was thought: in France and especially in the bank numbers & measuring the facts are appreciated, but it seems that in Finland the process and feeling the move and having dialogue is more important. Maybe this feeling resonates with the people we met on the way?
Personally, I was honoured to meet with all these people and companies that are highly intersting for Monkeys. Now it’s time to start discovering the seeds this learning journey has planted. Thank you for your commitment and presence, all who contributed and joined the journey! My next goal, other one written in the same Learning Contract in Quito, is to make 100 % of the turnover from outside of Finland. Maybe this week with CA was a step towards that too.
Cheers and love,
Henna Monkey
Ps. Special thank you for Christian Mayeur and Sanna Tossavainen for creating this and giving us a chance to be part of this and work with you. It’s been quite a trip!
Renewed Elevator Pitch: Help with Interaction Culture
May 4th
Monday morning was good for us. I think it was because last week we had had a busy week working with some customer projects. We learned a lot.
We visited Design Factory at the Aalto University in Espoo and met Inka (in the picture below on the left) there. Actually, she was already a friend of Henna’s since Paphos seminar last summer but we didn’t know that before Tatu gave her our Banana business card. She is also a designer, also for material but nowadays more and more for intangible. Very interesting place that Design Factory.
I am sure the visit to Design Factory contributed to our learning. What we learned for example that we are at our best when creating the interaction culture. We can create an environment for learning, and an environment where people can talk with one another. And that probably is the core of our business.
Here are first three development versions of our elevator pitch, first one was: We are Monkey Business and we first thought that we ignite collectives. Hä? Now that doesn’t say much, right? Let’s try again… We are MB and we are learning designers. Hmm. Still pretty broad and doesn’t really tell what we do. Ok, we worked a bit more and with the time came the idea of MB building learning environments. That was quite ok, but many times people associate learning environment with something virtual and happening with computers. So not so good for us. So finally we came up with this…
We are Monkey Business and we help our customers to build a better interaction culture.
How does that sound to you?
Forest Solo is coming, Do you wanna join us?
Mar 11th
Johanna met in Tulimyrsky a really nice lady, Hilkka from Tupaswilla. In Tulimyrsky was speaking Heikki Peltola and he asked us 8 questinons. Those were
1. What I love to do?
2. What I´m good at?
3. What ignites me?
4. What pisses me off?
5. What do I value in life?
6. What do I want to avoide?
7. What I want to learn?
8. What will I become when I grown up?
Then we got a chance to find a new person and share our answers with each other. Hilkka waved to me and so we shared our answers. Their answers were quite similar. I told to Hilkka about Tralvel Agency for Superheroes and we noticed that we share the passion for similar things. We both are creating experinences and in the centre of everything is learning.
Couple days ago Henna and Johanna went to meet Hilkka in Laukaa, Tupaswilla. When we arrived in there Henna said that ”ou, we came in the winter wonder land !” It was becouse there was so much of snow! We met also Jussi who owns the place with his father. The place was awesome, nearby the place was small lake and we walked with Jussi up to the hill. There was beautiful fiew, fire place and a hootchie. Its´ a great place to quiet down. In Tupaswilla you can walkabout with snowshoes and you can do many things over there.
We have been asked when would be next Forest Solo. Tupaswilla would be great place for that. Do you wanna find your personal mastery with us at Forest Solo in Tupaswilla?
Yellow, Johanna
Monkey Business House Warming Party Videos
Mar 2nd
Last Friday on the 26th of February we had a house warming party at our new office in Vaajakoski’s Teollisuustalo. According to wild guessing there where maybe 80 guests in total. Thanks for everyone who came by, and also greetings for those who couldn’t make it this time. We will host a new party when the snow is gone.
Here are three videos that you may already have seen at MonkeyTV at Qik or Youtube. First two are in English and third one in Finnish. We also took plenty of pictures but those will come later. Enjoy!
Monkeys on the road!
Feb 5th
” I visited your website and didn´t just get what you do? ” Typical comment from our friends. What do we do? What have been doeing lately? Are we REAL entrepreneurs? How are we making world more fun and yellow?
Every Monday Morning is Monkey Monday. Or sometimes it´s Tuesday. But we need to be in face to face contact to learn, laugh and live. Last week I and Ville hoasted four hours in Lahti University of Applied science. Our hidden plan was to encourage two hundred students towards creative economy and entrepreneurship. But our visible goal was to run the best and most enjoyable schoolday of year 2010. We used stories, dialogue, mental models game and punisher vs. pyromane -exercise. In the end about 90% of students answered YES! So it was “good tennis” from us. Good Job.
Thursday Janne went to coach three days session for start up entrepreneurs in a 1,5 year long process in Central Finland, Laukaa area. And now he is ending a one similar process in Northern Finland, Posio area. Janne is our specialist for long processies. I was working for a day in Helsinkin with Brand Brothers Finland for Tammi publishers. Our task was challenging: “do what feels right”. So we worked as interaction fakirs to make some atmosphere magic…
Henna and Johanna has had several meetings around issue of HUB Jyväskylä in Helsinki, Jyväskylä and Tampere. Henna is fighting hard to save her home region, Iisalmi by entrepreneurship. And aside Henna has closed some related deals. Johanna has found a surprice for us. It´s red? We´ll see it on monday…
Ville the Fox, our geek has been coaching two days in University of Oulu with Zestmark. Aside Ville takes care of our connections to the virtual world. And he is also the brains for Monkey Business with his ideas, precence and jazz. Francis Francis X1, yellow, arrived to our office on Tuesday. And we were really exited. Not a single cup of espresso was made. Cos it was ESE(easy serving espresso) model and we returned it at the same day. The biggest failure of the week. Wednesday we had a deep three hour dialogue with Innovation Professor Antti Hautamäki from University of Jyväskylä. Themes were creative economy and cultures meaning for an area. Results will go to parliaments future forum and we are one example…
So here we go. Again. And again. Something will be remembered and alot forgotten. Take it yellow!
Tantourist.
Don’t Eat Yellow Snow! VillaWool Beanies available now
Feb 1st
Heyhou All friends of Monkey Business!
Do you remember our Beanie campaign from last year? Even though it was only two that were sold, and the other customer was myself, the beanie got into an English street fashion blog and the brand was also exhibited in NYC later on. Outo wear is doing well and kicking, I think.
We are proud to bring you new beanies to warm your precious heads this year. Sometime ago Janne came to our office smiling and clearly excited about something. He told us that he had found something explosively fantastic from shop yesterday. Well, he didn’t share us directly what is was but the next morning he walked into our office wearing a hat that had big letter writing on it: “Don’t Eat Yellow Snow!”
We were really excited about the new beanie not least because we found out that it was made by VillaWool, a 35-year old family company from Finland. We had been using their other hats for years already. And as the freezing weather doesn’t seem to get much warmer we thought it is time to contact the company for little co-operation. Also the trigger for the contact was that our friend Soren who bought the hat last year told me that his beanie got lost… So Soren et al. here is what Matti from VillaWool says about the hat:
deys (Don’t Eat Yellow Snow) slogan was originally used by the first and only original Helsinki based Ski-Store called SkiSystems somewhere in the early 70s. SkiSystems were our first customers in this beanie business. real tough guys back in the days.
We are proud to say that you can order your own DEYS beanie now. Price is 30€ including Finnish VAT and mailing all over the world. Let us know which color your prefer: white, gray (my favorite) or black (Janne’s beanie is black). You should make the order by tomorrow 12pm in order to catch the first round of orders. If you somehow missed this message do not worry but just make an inquiry for the beanie as we will order couple extra to be sold from our office directly.
Peace, Love and Bananas,
Ville
MonkeyTV online now in Qik and Youtube!
Jan 25th
MonkeyTV now online here in https://qik.com/monkeybusiness!
As part of our Social Media strategy – “you have to give chance an opportunity” again inspired by Matti Nykänen and made famous by E.Saarinen – we have started a MonkeyTV. It’s an online TV Channel that will have for example monkeying around, short interviews, book reviews, live reporting from events and parties and so on what ever we find fresh and worthy being online. We have been online for a month or so, but until now I wasn’t sure if we had got the real essence of the MonkeyTV recorded. But here we are, ladies and gentlemen, see the video below!
You will know us from the following logo:
It is drawn by Pernan Goni, an illustrator and inspiring entrepreneur from Bilbao. He’s got a blog, too. I met him over in Bilbao last October and I am very happy he promised to co-operate with us for the MonkeyTV and also in future. Moreover, he is an excellent cartoonist – see a MonkeyTV video here where he explains one quick cartoon about creativity in Basque Country. Thanks a lot Pernan for the great work!
Currently we operate MonkeyTV with Qik. It’s linked to our Youtube channel, so if you are there feel free to connect with us.
Have a yellow week everyone! Ville
Legendary letters to Inspiring people: Esa Saarinen
Jan 19th
In Monkey Business we have been playing with idea about having a Board for Enthusiasm. That board would be responsible for encouraging us to go even further to areas where we haven´t been yet. Board for thinking with heart, for families and humanity. And at least I think that philosopher Esa Saarinen would be the MAN for Managing (firing up) that board. Who else should be in?
From Esa I have learned most about interaction, systems thinking and systems intelligence. Esas week long seminars in Cyprus are astounding experience. He is a master of storytelling. Storyes that make normal people like me to understand philosophy. “Good life is born from better thoughts. You are allways more than any of your own expectations. There is allways more good in us than what you can see.”
I send the letter to thank Esa about making my life more rich and meaningful. And to thank about Conspiracy of Positive Force which we in Monkey Business really meet at unexpected places. Esas Queen, Pipsa, has named us Monkey Babes.
ESA – keep it yellow!
Tantourist.
(Monkey Business reserves the right to change the world.)
What´s cooking Linus?
Jan 19th
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.
First reply to our legendary letters!
Dec 11th
YES! I got a letter yesterday. Chritmas card in an envelope, with printed address sticker. Text was written by hand. And I was sooo exited to realize it was from Jaana Venkula. I wrote to her 14th of September – it´s also in our blog, here.
Jaana thanks me for the splendid letter which she got and wellcomes us to be in contact with her later. And all the best for 2010.
Jaana – this was really uplifting! THANKS!
Tantourist.
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