I decided to blog this reflection paper, since MINN is all about open innovation, and who could call it open if I just write for our MINNteam and for our coaches? So here’s to you, a reflection of the elements that made us grow into a team during the year of 11 meetings in 7 different places around the world.

The core elements of MINN evolving into a real team – my top 6 list

1. Finland session January 2011 – A takeoff for the roller coaster year & 1st challenging video together as a common challenge

We started our journey in Finland in January 2011 by visiting head of Nokia’s crowd sourcing, Pia Erkinheimo. Pia was a sharp lady talking about the worldwide markets and the meeting with her left us with a thought: could we possibly support Nokia with Open Innovation  & crowd sourcing while we go around the world with MINN? We even made a video proposal for that on the same day, and it was not easy. “What could we sell as a minnteam?”, we asked ourselves. The most memorable thing we got out of the session was Pia’s kind and firm handshake that was guiding our behavior in all the tough moments on the rest of the year! From Helsinki we continued to Jyväskylä, and there Taulun Kartano, sauna, jacuzzi & mortal jumps on snow made Finland a wonderful experience for all the MINNERS and created a base for our roller coaster year to start.

2. Orio session – team complete

March 2011 we met in Orio, Basque Country. There 3 new people: Ander, Santi & Jordi joined MINN and the team became complete. A session was weird, included for example biodance & meditation, as well as a lot of personal reflection, but it worked fine for teaming up. Finally we made a birth giving for the big Spanish retail shop chain Eroski at Eutokia and I still remember how we implemented all the things we had learned in Orio instead of implementing all the things we had learned in life before Orio. Maybe Orio touched us so deeply? 

3. Learning Journeys & shared experiences: Finland, San Francisco & Chindia 

Traveling together always helps team to team up. April 2011 we had a week-long Learning Journey in San Francisco & Silicon Valley, and the homework was to make a pitch of our own project and present it for investors at Hub SoMa. The pitching event made us see each other’s work clearly and strongly. I believe that very afternoon in San Francisco in front of the investors caused a big step in our teaming up. There we were real, vulnerable ourselves, maybe for the first time with MINNTEAM.

#minnteam BG @Aalto Design Factory at Tongi Uni, Shanghai.

October 2011 we made a two-weeks-long Chindia Learning Journey, and there the element of growing most as a team was Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta. It was a touching experience for the team. Everyone got to the uncomfort zone when seeing all those people with totally poor conditions that none of them had chosen but the life had given to them. Our job was to help feeding these people and to give them care and love. Personally I was inspired to caress the hair of all the ladies, and as soon as I got the brush I got shocked too: the hair of the lady I approached was full of bleaches. Same thing with the lady on her right, and on her left! At night we went to sleep at Paragon hostel, that seemed to be full of bleaches too, but luckily was not. Paragon has been in our minds ever since and after India we’ve been more a team than ever.

4. Birthgivings: Birthgiving is a process of creating and crystalizing new knowledge and it’s one of the main learning tools in Tiimiakatemia. We made birthgivings in the end of every session, and to summarize the TOP3 I refer to the ones at Hub Madrid, Shanghai Aalto DF and Mondragon University’s main campus Onãti.

February 2011 in Madrid our birthgiving under the theme of co-creating with customers was sensational! We created a great tool called cook-creation for enhancing the co-creation with customers. We invented an open client-relation barometer too. In the end we made money with this birth giving by asking who sees value in us and wants to invest on #minnteam. More than 20 people out of 40 wanted to! We succeeded as a team and created an innovative & easy tool around relationships & cooking & relationships in no time.

October 2011 in Shanghai we had spent a day with Peter Senge at Taihu Great Learning Center and we gave birth with the question: “Zhong young is MINN, what do we want to accomplish?” The result was a great China-inspired learning session with 60-80 students of Aalto Design Factory @Tongi University. A minner Inigo Blanco has made a great reflective post about the knowledge created in that BG in his blog whitekaos.

December 2011 the birth giving happened with our intrapreneurial project teams that came to work with minners from each participating company: NRG, Init, The Hub Gipuzkoa, Danobat, Gaia, Monkey Business, Eroski, Tiimiakatemia and the question was: Why? Why? Why? – Why I’m doing this? – Why are we doing it / why this team exists? Why this project / company exists? And second question: What are the results this project is going to present by July 2012? All teams were making effort to present these fundamental things for the community of all the 60 MINN-intrapreneurs in Mondragon Tiimiakatemia’s main campus at Onãti. Our MINN team coach Jose Mari cried in the end, so touching it was to see the teams working for the cause that matters: our intrapreneurial projects. Of course his work as a team coach together with Anita had a strong effect on our team development: no team develops as fast as a coached team.

5. Twitter & box & informal meetings, parties and phone calls

#minnteam has been our reference in twitter, and anytime I wanted to see what’s up with our team or when I wanted to announce something for our team I did it there.

The.box has been our tool for sharing for essays & reflection papers. Useful for reading my teammates reflections, but we should blog them more openly. However I thin that the box has to improve in openess, and maybe  for example an open blog would have been a better option for our sharing.

In Madrid we partied together, and in Jyväskylä too. Parties always do good for team spirit!

6. Dialogue: We discovered dialogue really just in India after 9 months of the journey together. Dialogue between us and projects between our fascinating participating companies would take MINNTEAM to totally new level! Now we are on the way there as we have realized this. We had quite good dialogue in Barcelona around the 360 team feedback  session already, but it really demands more practice, with a team like ours 800 hours would take us to good skills, according to the practical study made over 19 years in Tiimiakatemia. In MINN1 we did not really practice freely flowing dialogue more than 36 hours maybe. That we should practice more and also we should spend more time together as a team just talking about whatever where ever.

How these learnings/elements/actions could be applied to the teams of our own intrapreneurship projects?

Now Tatu and Ville from Monkey Business are participating to MINN with about 20 others – MINN is growing!

I think in our company we are implementing a lot of MINN / Tiimiakatemia tools and actions already. It’s natural for us because we are a Tiimiakatemia-born company. We are using dialogue, sharing everything online in our blog & dropbox & twitter & Facebook, and sometimes doing birthgivings too and of course tracking customer visits and sales.

Here’s my opinion on how we do with Monkeys in my 6-point checklist of elements and what we should improve:

1. Videos together – we started this by filming & editing a documentary: Monkeys Year 2011 and Insights About the Future.

2. Team complete – we should search for the skills we are missing and acknowledge the team we are, like Janne did well in his blog post about Monkey Business team for 2012 (post in Finnish here).

3. Learning Journeys – we should do more of Learning Journeys with Monkey Business as participants: Paphos seminar with a very influential Finnish philosopher Esa Saarinen in summer 2012 maybe!

4. Birtgivings: why not doing more of birthgivings with/for our clients and for ourselves?

5. Sharing knowledge in online environments we handle ok in my opinion – we just need to keep exploring new tools and maybe start using Karmacracy too!

6. Dialogue - we are learning this every week 4 hours, we still need to learn to speak more directly and maybe change the setting of this dialogue session now that Monkey has grown from 6 to 8 people and sharing with 8 takes more time than sharing with 6.

Hopefully in 2012 this list will grow and MINN2 will rock and roll for totally new levels! In fact I’m sure about that. Let’s go!

With Yellow regards,

Henna Monkey

Minn fellow Inigo Blanco travels with Henna in China and India

They say Chinese people are not very innovative, but that hasn’t always been the case: history tels that the Chinese were the first to build seagoing ships, and even sailed around the world and discovered all the continents before Columbus and friends. What happened to this ability to create then? The best guess refers to control. Control came into the society and limited the innovative-ness. Now China is developing in the speed that is hard to even imagine. There’s a boom in internal market, the Chinese middle class is growing rapidly and there are 1340 million people in this country and just 666 million of these people are living urban middle class life. There’s another half to come on board in the coming years just inside China.

And then the expats…Shanghai is full of expatriates. “You can live and work years in Shanghai without ever talking with a Chinese person.” It’s a pity but true, that foreigners in China come and stay as foreigners too easily. To really integrate into the society and make business in China you need to master the “Guanxi” – “the relationship”, and for getting guanxi you need guanxi, someone who’s already locally trusted and helps you. But that’s not enough. If I want to get something done in China I have to offer a win-win situation, benefit for China and benefit for me. Otherwise I won’t move anywhere. The Chinese say things are never black or white, they are grey, or something else. This is difficult for the western more of specific mind. Maybe that’s why they say “It’s true that Chinese market is a difficult market.”, but always continue “But you have to come here.”

As said China is developing rapidly. Now the country has a goal to turn China into an Innovation by 2020. Currently the focus is on creating a harmonious society, and it’s working: all classes of society from villages to the cities have improved their life quality during the past years. China has to be innovative because the size and quantity of the country demands special knowledge, and in the end you want to be part of the value creation process: “Nobody wants to make 10 dollar iPhones in China when they are sold in other countries with 400 dollars.” China also has to create train tracks that are longer than in any other place in the world, and using the high speed trains that are faster than in any other place in the world, so there’s no existing knowledge for this because nobody has done that yet. So China needs to educate their own engineers. Also there are many environmental and infrastructual issues to be solved with China’s own muscles, because it’s quite impossible to bring people from outside and have them fully understanding the Chinese society and the reasons why the Facebook and Google are still banned.

“You need your own brain to deal with your own environment”. But can you tell some Chinese brand? How about Japanese?

3 out of 10 worlds largest banks are Chinese because they have very big assets, but who knows the names of these banks? Chinese businesses are not yet known worldwide, and maybe there is market for marketing people from all over the world to work with the Chinese outside of China, since in China it’s so challenging, also because of protectionism. Anyhow here’s a million dollar tip for the ones who want to enter China in business. Tip is given by Nicholas Musy, a head of Swiss Chamber of Commerce, who has been a resident of China since 1988 and helped about 50 companies to start their functions in China. The tip is simple: You need to have the right concept. Meaning that you need to do something that others don’t do. Something that the Chinese won’t do / can’t do for any reason. Because if you enter with a thing that is possible and valuable to copy, you know what happens Also you need to commit the right people. Listening to the company managers and anyone dealing with people in China they say that HR is the biggest issue and pain in the ass to handle.

I think that Monkeys and Team Academy could face the challenge of China using this tip – we have potential here clearly, because the Chinese are yet not very much team oriented.

Today, on 12th of October, we had an amazing day at Taihu with Peter Senge and Master Nan. Peter encouraged TA to come to China and asked what are we trying to accomplish. And when we told about exchanging knowledge as it’s the only resource that grows when in use, Master Nan said that knowledge is good because it brings up feelings. The conclusion of learnings at Master Nan’s place is well put by Peter: “To become a leader you must first become a human being.” And as I check my learning goals for this trip, written before it even started, #1 goal was to become more human. I’m on the way.

Next week I’ll write about India.

1. The one who is ready to slow down and stop will get most out of the journey.
2. Learning is a journey. If we enjoy the journey we are not in a hurry.
3. The in-between is what matters. Like Liher has said in the comments of the previous thesis for traveling: “I feel that everytime I go to a new place I discover something new. But  something that you cannot find in a book, in internet, not even someone  can tell you. You have to experience it, and feel it.”
4. What may seem un-effective is the most effective when it comes to learning.
5. It’s good to have a goal but we also need an open mind for emerging things, which may end up being more meaningful than the original goal.
6. What we don’t know matters more than what we know.
7. Better life comes via better thoughts. Better thoughts via better questions. Better questions via humble, open minded travelling.
8. Trust the process*. *Nonaka’s & Takeuchi’s knowledge creation process. We need action and dialogue in a proper balance.
9. Superheroes always get where they want to get, and in the right time.
10. Be ready for an adventure and expect the unexpected.
11. Trust your intuition and the team you travel with.
12. Listen and look around. Wonder. Smile.

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

One crucial tool we used was Monkey Business’ the Mental Model Game. It supports the process of recognizing one’s own and other people’s ways of seeing the world, and helps appreciate the different viewpoints.

Really interesting to see how the form of a game impacts people’s conversations. Maybe Marc Prensky provides some good thoughts on this phenomenon in “why games engage us”:

Now what happened during the Mental Model Game? Put simply, the participants shared their views about open inquiries, so questions like “what’s the difference between craziness and genius?” or “are we alone in the universe?” They talked in various constellations, for example large groups, smaller groups or individually, and they captured key insights. Initially, questions were given by the hosts, later the participants generated their own. Here are some juicy bits that people in Hamburg reflected:

Everything can be questioned what I had thought I knew
Don´t think just with your own head
Think crazy
Everything is changeable
Ideas are formed in the “connecting room” – don´t create any borders for yourself
Perspectives, perspectives, perspectives
People see things even more differently than I thought
It is important to have fun in life!
Again I learned quite a bit about myself
There is no limit for human creativity

The dialogue in the group reached a good level, and when one of the participants brought up the question: “What is the core of a human being”, it arose so much interest that it became the basis for the birthgiving phase of the workshop (conversion). This was guided by the question „if the inner core of the human being is so important, how will I incorporate it into my business?“

Participants’ creativity did not even stop at biblical quotations when Jesus, surrounded by his apostles, did a headstand, and remained in that position for the rest of the Last Supper. A really good way of shaking one’s mental models, isn’t it?

Thank you Monkey Business for playing the Mental Model Game with us in Germany, let’s continue this good cooperation in the future.

Writer is a friend of Monkey Business and enthusiastic of Team Academy

Theresia Warwitz

It has three basic products:

1. Highly personalized journeys for individuals, couples or small teams that are ready to embrace the flow and serendipity. Price: 1500€ a day + expenses + VAT
2. Learning Journeys for bigger teams and groups. Like my friend Charles said yesterday over Skype:  for people who are convinced that they need to see and think differently. Better organized and planned, ups, I mean guessed Price 3000€ a day + expenses + VAT
3. Different camps e.g. Surfcamps & Divecamps Aimed at people who like to wear jeans at school or work. If it’s warm, these people use flipflops or sneakers. Price: 50-500€ per person + expenses for a week. Scholarships should be available soon.
4. Update 15.2.2011 6:42pm! Also there is something called Zestcamps, organized by our friend Anu from Zestmark. I think that is really close to Superheroes Travel Agency actions, thus I want to bring it up. Zestmark’s focus is to help young people find their thing.

The idea is to go beyond travelling. Emphasize the inner journey. Learn together. Have good meals and dialogue. Meet new people. Have fun, play and laugh.

It would be great to know what you think after reading this, so please, drop a comment!

Ps. Thanks all of you with whom I have had chance to travel together. I have learnt a lot with you.

I am on my way home from Basque Country. I have visited there twice a year since 2007, that makes it 8 times. I like the place very much, nice people, goood food, relaxed culture, interesting conversations and so on. This time was good reflections about the future of Team Academy of Tecnalia, Service Design Thinking and new illustrations by Lady My and Pernan, for example. Somehow I feel very relaxed after this journey, even though I come home with a bit of a flue. I am in a situation where there is time and room to think what to do next, as I have just finished a big project that kept me busy for over 6 months, Apps4Finland. Now it’s time to do something different. Maybe it’s a further development and sales of the Mental Models Game. Maybe it’s some iPhone apps. Maybe development of the Team Academy international network. Maybe something to do with semantic web. Maybe a new clothing brand. Maybe some more team coaching. Or podcasts and MonkeyTV youtube -videos. Who knows? I don’t know. But I am confident that with my fellow yellow monkeys I will find something seriously fun to do. I am excited. So now I have time to write blog this month, keep the Christmas calendar alive. Also, I think other monkeys will be writing as well, so I am confident we will rock the December with you. Please let us know what you think through comments, likes etc. and let’s connect. I promise to respond to every comment, as I am trying to learn what this social media is all about.

Many warm regards, a big hug!

Ville Monkey

Ps. For the Finnish speakers, and friends who use Google Translations, a different calendar will be open at the Finnish blog of ours.

Since 2007 Spring when we came here first time with Tatu the Monkey and Sari Veripaa we gave the following notebook to Javier Ruiz. He has a key role in the birth of Monkey Business, because he trusted the young and enthusiastic guys as well as he asked the question:

“If you were an animal, what animal were you?” -Javier Ruiz

I have come back to Basque Country twice a year, every Spring and Autumn. I am happy and grateful having had the opportunity to get to know this special culture and plenty of very nice and interesting people from here.

This time again it was Javier Ruiz who contacted us through Facebook on Friday night telling us to come over in November. We had couple of Skype calls, Mimmu from Partus joined the process and here we are. As a part of the workshop organized by Team Academy of Teknalia I gave a 15 minute presentation about the history of Monkey Business. I am right now uploading the 400mb video into MonkeyTV about the presentation, but meanwhile please have a look at the slides.

The presentation went well, I think. I got some good feedback (combining stories into theory and inquiry, also one message on Twitter Thanks a lot Juhis for the illustrations, and Jaakko for the background, fellow Monkeys Tatu, Janne, Henna, Johanna, Liher and Iiro for the story and the questions.

Ps. When I travel, I like to think that if I get even one idea to put into practice I consider the journey to be a succesful. This journey has brough me many! For example an idea about the 1st anniversary of Yellow Office in February or March. It would be a one day seminar and a party. Limited participation of 30-50 people, and surprise key note speakers with TED style presentations as well as open space for anybody to host a session.

Since Oman we have been creating more action here and there. And despite that we are still smiling. We see the world as we look at it. Yellow, sunny and bright. As that photo taken yesterday in our office upstairs. Or this one taken in our hoods today morning when cyckling here.

We made our record revenue in August. But we still must improve to keep our enterprise sustainable. Yellow man has got company, friends to work with us. We have been doeing right things right. Maybe. And information board downstairs is updated too!

Hey! I am happy. Life is good. Love. (Iphone still blackout.)

Thanks Monkeys & All. Wouldn´t be here alone.

Tantourist.

Thanks to our partners CoMind and Catherwood Travels, we are working on the philosophy for the Superheroes’ Travel Agency. This is based on our shared experiences, but our crystallization. Also, this is work in progress and a process.

Key points right now are:

1. Learning Process (Time & Leadership)
2. Customer Intimacy (Before, During, After the event)
3. Cultural Experience e.g. Finnish
4. People-to-People Approach
5. Philosophy of Co-Creation (Dialogue, Access, Risks, Transparency ref. C.K. Prahalad)
6. Shared understanding about what we are doing and why (x5)
7. Main theme and Purpose
8. Serious Fun.
9. Systems Intelligence
10. More Action. More Chaos. More Mistakes. More Learning.

Does this make sense? What do you think?