Short Article
Monkey See Monkey Do
Aug 31st
In this year at Pipefest I saw Adam Tensta live. (Thanks Anu of ZestMark and all who have done work to build up this phenomenon in Finland.) Adam got a cool set up on stage. Live Drums, DJ, and a guy behind a sampler. So beats were tight! I suppose the beat came from all three sources, and I can tell, the bass kicked nicely.
Adam Tensta got a song titled Monkey. That, quite obviously, caught my attention. What is he singing about? What does it mean – Monkey See. Monkey Do? I think I had heard these words before, but never got to study about the concept before. Wikipedia got a short article about it as well as usingenglish.com – I understand the idea that so that Monkey mimics and copies behavior, even if he doesn’t understand why he does it. Just seeing and doing. A great example of that is the story about the five monkeys experiment. Copying behavior, without asking why, that is.
One reason I got excited about this Monkey See Monkey Do concept is the just passed summer holidays. After the holidays I have asked myself many times this simple question, why?
Why am I doing what I am doing?
What is it that I should be doing? I am in the search of meaning, so that work is not only about seeing and doing. Tatu told me today when we were taking a bus to our Yellow Office that August has been hectic but he has managed to keep his own rhythm still. How about you? How is the Autumn and work looking like?
Learning Journey to San Francisco is made of…
Apr 12th
First day behind in this unique 1st Learning Journey to San Francisco we’ve been co-creating together with the Learning Journeys crew Liher, Kaisu and Bego Maite, and the Mondragon Team Academy community.
Who’s on board in here? It’s 2 Uni programs, BBA and Master from Mondragon Team Academy, and 4 pioneer participants of the 1st Learning Journey to SFO with their 2 coaches. All together we are about 40 experimenting the contemporary business context here thiw week.
Yesterday was an inspirational day and it already contained two or more chances to pitch the projects in front of the audience. First we landed in the Hub SoMa, where 10 Hub entrepreneurs were joining us talking their stories of playing in the US market. It was Adam Archer from GamesThatGive, wh said that a young company crew needs to have only 2 roles: “you just need people who are building and selling”. Then there was Javier Ideami, who shared that possibility lurks around every corner, and you need t keep listening to the market carefully and adapt to it a bit, because if you don’t do so you will be forgotten. Also I remember Santiago from softonic.com talking about the importance of having the right people on board in the beginning. “It’s a strategic esicion with whom you
work, and hiring great people needs great investment.” Later on, we had a session with Victoria Hale from medicines360.com, who had created a non-profit drug company and said that in the medical sciences field there are multiple areas where help is needed, but not given, due to the market powers. For example in USA 50 % of the pregnancies are unplanned, and contraceptive pills are not sold without meeting a doctor. There lurks a great change possibility, for example. Her rule of thumb was that business lurks in fields where no one else wants to go. And to go there, she has always been a serius person who came to do serious things. There were also more entrepreneurs from the Hub Ventures program wh were purifying water and building better sanitary solutions to India…quite inspirational in deed! In the evening we headed to the Summit Café, where MTA had invited some local entrepreneurs, and I met for exapmle Espen, an ex Kaospilot Team Leader, who now lives in San Francisco and builds interactive toys for facilitation purposes.
Espen comes to work with a cost of costs, and takes a persentage of sales and a patent of of a new creation, and so he’s affordable for all small and medium size businesses too. Shall we buy him in Monkey Business for a week or two? 
This banana-surfing monkey is his gift for us. Maybe it’s he himself?
Right now I have to go because MINN, my Master’s team, is about to start brainstorming and preparations for today’s meetings with BitTorrent, IDEO and Innvalley. I have to say that this program is an eye-opening, and brain-nurturing experience in many ways!! Yesterday we tried concreticizing what is MINN, and we are still around here:
MINN is a lively, constantly evolving executive learning journey at the service of creative processes, participatory and open environments.
It was set up to research and experience the interaction between the individual, company and community on a contemporary business context.
The value of MINN lies on a unique team for experimentation and promoting new cross-disciplinary formulae.
What do you think?
See you tonight with some new insights….
Yellow regards,
Henna
Word of Mouth goes on in Twitter
Apr 25th
Warning: If you a new to Twitter, this post may contain couple of concepts that you may not know, and thus I recommend checking the Twitter 101 at the bottom of this post first.
The other day I was going through some random twitter updates based on my music, please list. I saw what I think was an update by AnnieMac, DJ and Radio host of BBC Radio 1 Friday night show. She was re-tweeting a post by dj zinc, about his new track being uploaded into youtube, ripped from Annie Mac’s show. I had heard of DJ zinc to be one of the pioneers of Drum’n'bass and a very good DJ, so I thought I should check out the track. I liked the track. It’s not Drum’n'bass but the sound is rather fresh. Track is called Nexx and is from the Crack House EP.
I liked the track, and did what I usually do when I see a new interesting looking person on Twitter: I checked the recent tweets of that person. I thought it would bring me value if I followed this person. Reasons I may not follow someone is excess tweeting without much content. For example, I wasn’t interested to hear a lot about Questlove‘s life so I decided not to follow him. He has over 1 300 000 people following him. I have like 400. Tatu thinks it’s quite a bit, and I started to think that too, until I saw the amount Questlove had and was returned to the ground. Still a long way to go. Oh yes, back to the case.
So I decided to follow dj zinc. And soon comes a new tweet by him. I use Tweetdeck to keep track of different lists. So on the already mentioned Music, Please list I saw a tweet by DJ Zink that I just started to follow: “i bought them pink ortofon needles but they’re not very good. nice clour tho.” See the picture below.
What does this mean? It means that it’s very unlikely I will never buy those pink needles (you use them in turntables to listen those old school records, LPs). Why? Well, just because a long respected member of a DJ community said that they are not so good. If someone says something on twitter about some product, I think it’s like printing it on the packaging of the same product. Probably though I would say Twitter is more reliable than the marketing department of a company.
So why should people care? What would this mean to a service company like Monkey Business? I think this is a good proof that the connections are really getting shorter. Because of Twitter, I hear random comments from people like Annie Mac, Dj Zinc, Tom Peters, Jussi Junikka, Esa Toivonen, Haloefekti and so on that I otherwise wouldn’t hear, at least not daily. (I currently follow about 390 people). My Social Media philosophy “gotta give chance an opportunity” applies very well here. And the consequence of these short connections and fast moving messages is that we as a company have to be transparent and consistent. We need to walk the talk in order to get the positive online-talk going on. And vice versa. If we do not do our work well, it may be so that the world knows sooner than ourselves.
Here’s a little glossary of terms used in the post above. A little Twitter 101 or ABC by @bananadotfi
1. Re-Tweeting: Sending again a tweet that somebody wrote
2. @ mentioning someone: When you @-mention someone, the someone is likely to read that tweet for sure as it’s saved on a specific spot in Twitter. A nice example was by @jeffjarvis I think who said that he had 199 @-messaged waiting for him after one talk in
3. Follow me on Twitter, Contact me through Twitter. -> It’s easy to say out aloud. Twitter allows people to communicate shortly about blog posts, new images, youtube videos etc. that either you put online you or you find online. It’s easy to share interesting stuff through Twitter.
4. Links to other medias, such as Youtube. -> One essential thing in Twitter in my opinion are ourgoing links. It has created, or at least brought into the public a bunch of URL-shortening services such as bit.ly. Normally the webaddresses are long so it’s handy to make them shorter so that you don’t waste your precious marks. One tweet is no more than 140.
5. Subscribing to someone -> Usually tweets are public, and anyone can subscribe to anyone else. It’s also possible to make your tweets private and then you can sort out with whom to share your tweets.
6. Recent Tweets -> A list of recent tweets of someone. Showing on the public page of a person. You can see list of my recent tweets here.
7. Providing Value -> I see the essential question related to Twitter for me to be: “How to provide value to my followers with 140 marks” It’s a joyful challenge sometimes.
8. Followers, amount of -> How many people are following your tweets. How many people see your tweet on their home page when you tweet.
9. Home page. -> Shows all the tweets by people whom you’ve subsrcribed in chronological order.
This post was based on a negative customer experience. It’s usually easier to complain than to thank. Let me sometime write a similar story that has a positive idea of some product or company. Although, actually this one started with the positive idea of Dj zinc’s song being tweeted around.
What is this Monkey Business?
Apr 7th
Common desire? Trust? Shared vision? Ugh. Puzzled. Yes. Words are challenging, even dangerous, ´cos it takes time to create common understanding. And we use words to get our experiences in somekind of order or frames. Is lack of imagination the only limit? Through words we create the world we live in, thus they are important. Is the glass half full or empty, or maybe the glass just has some water in it? What happens when we are on holiday? What it does to us?
We’ve been learning the hard way that without shared vision we are like a bunch of kids in a playground. Through anxiety we have realized we need to spend more time together as a team. That’s what they say that teaming up needs, shared time and a shared challenge.
According to Senge:
Premature converge of words of the vision sucks the life energy out of it.
So how do you know that time is right? By trial & error? What are the corner stones of building shared vision?
More action. More chaos. More mistakes. More learning.
More Creativity.
More trust. Myself. Us. Monkey Business. You. World. Life.
Christmas Calendar Day 15: Experience Economy
Dec 15th
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.
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.
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?
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.
X-mas Calendar Day 24th
Dec 10th
Don´t hesitate – don´t open it yet! Oh you did it allready. Is everyday like Christmas eve for you? Life as a gift?
We got a suberb surprise yesterday: we were kicked out from our office. Gotta be out until March. How can they kick us out? We don´t have any rent agreement made. We have been squatting here. What do we do now?
We give you a present. Order us to your office. For a week – month – year? To work with you. To help you. To boost you. What? Like office nomad. All we need is your kind invitation.
Or buy us to collaborate with you. We could:
*make a promotour to Lappland with cyclable electrical cars to work as an instant helpdesk for entrepreneurs(LeTim loves this idea)
*clean your carage
*organize a week long adventure for children of your employees
*?
“Life is like a banana – the longer you wait the sweeter it gets. Until it turns brown.” -Forrest Gump
Tantourist.
Monkey Christmas Calender – Day 3
Dec 3rd
Dear friends,
sometimes when you hear a good song it brings back good memories. July 2008 I had an oppurtunity to see Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band live in Olympic Stadium, Helsinki. When Max Weinberg hit the drums for the first time and Bruce let his guitar sing, I felt right away, that this is the show I had been waiting for.
The gick was in late july and it was a beautiful summernight. At the end of show, after three hours head blowing rockin, Bruce and the Band had one more suprise. Even though it was hot and sweaty, everybody had strenght rock just that one more song. Below you can check the video and please, sing along: Santa Claus is coming to Town!
With Yellow Regards,
Janne Monkey
Letter to Erlend Loe
Nov 19th
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.
Yellow, playful and sincere,
Johanna
Monkey Business Top Salary Limit
Nov 3rd
Greetings from Tulimyrsky. Me and Tatu are here on stage today. Very exciting experiment coming up in less than two hours: Dialogue with Keränen. It’s a talkshow Conan O’Brien style with four guests: Antti Kettunen from Solidi, Juha Kauppinen from SiteFactory, Karoliina Luoto from Sitra and The Office Nomad, Janne Saarikko.
Anyways, before our show we had a key note by Sami Salmenkivi from N2 Laundry. More about all this later, but in our table talk I got encouraged to push more content to our blog. With the philosophy of bringing value (hopefully), but more experiments rather than pursuit of perfection. So here we go, a post written about month ago. Idea has been around for 1 year or so. Keep it yellow!
We have been thinking about making a volunteeringly a top limit to the salaries in our company which would equal to the average Finnish salary that currently is about 2870 euros.
I think this one way to be a sustainable company. Firstly, we don’t pay ourselves out of the market. Secondly, I think often the ones who earn most also consume more than those with less resources.
It is said that we need to dramatically decrease the amount of the Greenhouse gases. Still I am writing this post at the Airport in Paris on my way to Bilbao. Peter Senge says we need to innovate new ways of living, nobody planned the industrial revolution and it was not centrally governed. It was more like thousands of small initiatives that made it happen. And that is going to be same with the new sustainable lifestyle revolution. It is not centrally governed and it will not be televised, although YouTube and Twitter and other social media will surely play a big role. World is flat and a member of The Hub here in Jyvaskyla can easily go and work in The Hub in Madrid, Sao Paulo or London, just to mention few. We will start with little monkeys a sustainable coffee house here in Jyväskylä and it is going to be a great success!
It is also maybe related to the transparency of our business. We want to make the world better by making it more fun and yellow. We are in the business of encouraging people. We work only with nice customers (our friends) but we are ready to take on joyful challenges. We work on projects that make the world better. We work with people who share this mission. Because the drove towards your dream is the biggest driver in this world.
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