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.

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.

sorry for the silence with our blog. It’s plenty of things going on in here:

Couple weeks back we started a good big project with Johanna called Apps4Finland. It’s done for Finnish Internet Democracy Association (Suomen Verkkodemokratiaseura ry) and we are the coordinators for that. A good challenge, and interesting case with a hot topic of Open Data. Also we are very happy that it climaxes in the MindTrek conference in Tampere, which is the biggest IT/Geek-conference in Finland. Nice to get involved into new spheres.

Another big thing that just kicked off is Team Mastery 3. We got 10 people on this exciting journey organized by Partus Ltd. I am coaching it together with Mimmu, with whom we have been e.g. to the SoL Global Forum in Vienna and to the Young Leader Training of Team Academy back in 2005.

Henna is right now in Iisalmi working with young aspiring students, future leaders and entrepreneurs, from various vocational schools. She is the headcoach of a 24hr entrepreneurial camp. Creating the learning environment there.

Johanna is maybe having the most fun of us all. She’s being a teampreneur for her friends who have their own commercial garden. And now it’s the busiest time of the year as the spring is here so loads of seeds to be planted. That keeps Johanna busy during the days this week. “The most important thing in life is gardening, and even that is not so important.” Old Zen wisdom goes.

Janne has been doing a learning environments with our partner Business Arena today working on the local innovation ecosystem of Central Finland.

Janna and Tatu did a journey to Kokkola last friday and Tatu has been typing fingers on fire proposals for co-operation for the regional council as well as for the univ of Applied Sciences over there. Let’s see what we can cook up.

This Saturday there’s a BarCamp in Helsinki. Me and Henna will be there of the Monkeys. Very interesting to see based on my experiences with hosting Open Spaces such as the Un-conference in Jyväskylä last Friday with Jane Porter. It was great to host a pretty revolutionary event made in co-operation between the Jyväskylä’s two universities.

Next week we have about 20 people coming from all over Europe to visit Finland. It’s a gathering of people with spark in their eyes to learn something about Systems Intelligence and how to deal with uncertain times. Very excited about this co-creational jungle trip with CoMind fellows.

I wonder what I am forgetting. Oh yes, we’ve got a new Monkey into the office. Iiro is a DJ, and about to graduate from Team Academy before the midsummer. He’s finishing now his thesis about exporting Finnish educational model into abroad. I am very honoured to get his energy and expertise into the Monkey Business. You are most welcome Iiro!

And finally, join our email list in order to get some exclusive news in a yellow and playful form. Keep us posted and we will do the same?

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!