Posts tagged Co-creation
Learnigs from the Jungle!
May 7th
Working together really shapes the partnership and cocreation. Last week Wed 28th of April till Sat 1st of May we had a learnig journey called Jungle Trip. It was first real cocreational project with CoMind. It took place in Helsinki, Jyväskylä and Taulun Kartano, Toivakka. Dialogues took place in plane, train, buss, smokesauna, pool, lake, walk… Thoughts were ignited by Esa Saarinen, SOL City, Team Academy and Design Factory. And we did learn a lot. Here is my short reflections about Jungle:
1.) Dialogue. Well obviously it´s the key element in cocreation. There can´t be shared undestanding without dialogue. And in Monkey Business we have learned to do “dialogue on the spot”. Short sessions between coaches- what´s happening and what do we want to happen next. Then we know what is the next move. When we know what we are aiming to – it´s easier to improvise. -> Goal!
2.) Culture. Or system. From the aspect of interaction. Someone has to lead in the beginning to make people interact. And then take care about culture througout the process. And this is something that separates TeamAcademy from many places. And this is something that will have a big role in DesignFactorys future. Team Academy is very down to earth and pragmatic, learning by doeing. Design Factorys comes to the same play-yard from different aspect, knowledge focused. And strongest tool in TeamAcademy are Leading Thoughts and yearly process of checking them.
3.)Braveness. We only become exellent by following our passion. We know who we are and how monkeys do things. We have to stand for our cornerstones. Our friend PAMPAM said it nicely:”The more serious someone is, the less I trust him/her”. So we need to remain the contact to our heart. Speak from it and to follow it.
What did you learn?
Thanks alot CoMind and all adventurers. “Unexpected is the spice of life.”
Tantourist, still alive.
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.
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 Business Design Philosophy
Oct 30th
We are working on building a new lay out for our blog (and there’s a blog in Finnish coming up too!) and for that process I wrote out some of the design philosophy down. This is version 0.5 BETA but I thought I should still drop it out for you. Here’s the classic banana with classes drawn by Lady My of MyJok back in late 2007.
1. Our mission is to make the world more fun and yellow. Our design are also fun and colorful.
1. Things are as they look and feel to a person. Not as somebody intents them to be but as someone experiences them.
1. All yellow is good. Our graphics don’t need to follow one clearly defined pattern or a set of rules, but part of our brand is that the visuals change a lot.
2. A Banana drawn by Lady My is the banana for us. We will stick to that until something totally explosive comes to our way.
3. All monkeys and bananas are part of our design strategy.
4. Our graphics should be aligned with our style. That is yellow, playful and sincere. Our Graphics and Designs should enhance the same message.
6. We like skateboarders, clothing designers, surfers, musicians and other party people in general. The idea is to enjoy life and have fun. Our designs should also follow that ideology. We search for ideas and inspiration everywhere but nature and pop culture especially.
7. We like to promote a wide range of designs and designers. We work with people we like and think are cool. We want to have loads of different designs.
Have a yellow weekend everyone!
Ps. The book recommendation of this week is by Hugh MacLeod and is called “Ignore Everybody – and 39 other keys to creativity.” I read it over the summer and is a quick read and gave me quite a few insights. There loads of good quotes and even more insightful drawings. Some of the things he writes and draws seems a bit cynical to me but he cleared it all by saying this: “Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle i.e. being human.” That’s the spirit I guess. You can read plenty of samples of the book at Hugh’s website.
Three Hour Workshop about Team Learning and Team Academy
Oct 8th
Now, as the topic says, the case is to host a three hour workshop about Team Academy and Team Learning. This is a nice tricky case. I think.
How to stage an experience of Team Academy in three hours?
How to make it so that people have fun and they learn? (In this case learning quals to change their behaviour, at least get one thing to put in practise.)
Should we show videos or tell some facts about Team Academy?
I am doing this with Anita from Creative Impact. We have never done a workshop together for a customer. I have worked a lot with her in the Team Mastery 2 and in the SoL’s evolution process, but we have not delivered things like this before together. It’s interesting to work with new people. I think we are about to learn something. I feel that. It always happens when working with new people. And learning is fun, when doing mistakes is allowed and even recommended.
Another interesting factor is that I have not met the customer ever before. We have changed some emails, and he has participated in the SoL Spain’s event that was about Team Academy. And now he is inviting his colleagues and friends into this workshop. Exciting. I think we need to talk with him more today in order to really know what he wants. What kind of results he is looking for? And what kind of results are the people he has invited into this workshop looking for? As Anita put it very well: What is the question that calls us into this meeting?
I think the questions above are very important if we think in the same way as Einstein used to. “If I had one hour to save the world I would use 59 minutes to figuring what the right question is and then 1 minute to actually solve it.” This is important because we have to do our a kick ass workshop with the right theme.
Anyways, we are thinking to start from the individual and personal mastery. I think in workshops it’s absolutely crucial to be on the personal level. What I can do to change this world? I get furious if people outsource the problem beyond their reach. As Gandhi says, we have to be the change we want to see in the world. And as Viktor Frankl says: “You can always choose your own attitude.”
Peter Senge asks in his book Fifth Discipline in the chapter about personal mastery two-three questions: More >
New Design Coming Up for Monkey Business
Sep 21st
We’ve made a deal with Jaakko from Kuvituskonttori to design a new image for Monkey Business. But he is not the only one visually talented friend of ours. Also, there’s a very promising young designer working currently at Intotalo who has a skill hard to match when drawing monkeys and other illustrations. Juha-Matti has drawn for example a great comic strip about Tupsu the Monkey and a superman Monkey.
This is our latest Design by the Tiimiakatemia bookshop host Esa. He gave it to us in the first page of a small notebook at the Team Mastery Arena (which was quite a success, by the way!) I think it’s rather cool and maybe this will be the design for our next T-shirt. And yes, the point of this post was to say that if there are some eager designers and or people with some eye for the visual candy please let us know. We are building a roster of artists, and we need loads of graphics in the future. My inspiration has come for this kind of organization and style initially from Mambo from Australia and and more recently also from Control Clothing from Finland. Cool stuff indeed by both of them, I think. Story by Ville Monkey
Team Mastery 2 last session starts today
Sep 16th
I am so excited. And I just can’t hide it. I ‘m about to loose control and I think I like it.
The Team Mastery 2 (TM2) process’ last session starts today here in Jyväskylä. We got friends coming from Basque Country and Madrid, plus Strasbourg and Angers as cross-fertilizers. We have had a great process that started 16 months ago in May 2008. Then we had first session with this team that is nowadays known as the Power Rangers. (Partypeoplesayyeah!)
I participated in the Team Mastery 1 (TM1) process together with Tatu between December 2006 and January 2008. It was great and that is were the foundations of Monkey Business were born. For those of you who haven’t heard Team Mastery, I should tell you that it is a coaching program for people who want to learn team learning coaching the Team Academy way aka with Partus methods. It’s organized by Partus and coached by the legendary Johannes “Partus” Partanen along with Hanna Heikkinen, and myself (Ville) now in the second process.
This TM2 process has been quite special. Ever since the second session in Markina, Basque Country where our theme was customers and marketing there have been external customers / partners involved in our sessions and at least in the birth givings. Also in Markina we came up with a concept “Tribe Fiesta”.
The third session about leadership and leading thoughts was in Strasbourg hosted by TM1 participants Pascal and Claude. In there we had many cross-fertilizers from the TM1 and also we celebrated the 1st anniversary of the Team Academy in Alsace (TAA). It was phenomenal, and the challenge the Power Rangers faced with the birth-giving was for the entire tribe of TAA.
In the fourth session about Innovation we were in Haarlem, and worked intensively with the local Team Academy. Yet again the Power Rangers found themselves in a challenge bigger than before, this time with the teamsters and the dynamic situation of the Team Academy in Haarlem (TAH). There we got to see the real power of this Power Rangers team, and they did amazing job coaching and empowering the teamentrepreneurs of the TAH.
For the fifth session we travelled back to Basque Country and were hosted by Mondragon University Team Academy team, Sain, Sari, Jose-Mari and Aitor and all. First celebrations in San Sebastian and official launch of LEINN, the Teampreneur program in Mondragon University, which got awesome press coverage (11 or so articles published in Basque and Spanish media). The session was about brand management and offerings, and we made it simultaneously with the new teams of Team Academy Euskadi. Whuh. “How do you coach brand?” was the question and I think the new teams got to see what the Team Academy brand is all about.
So here is a little diagram about the levels of challenge the Power Rangers have faced. And this time it’s even bigger. The rumours tell that it’s going to be about 150 people in the Team Mastery Arena event where we have our Team Mastery 2 process going on within it. Hmm 
Very exciting indeed. This challenge include coaching the Partus Learning Network coaches and the SoL Network’s leaders and Academics. I mean, now the friend leaders coaching skills are being tested. “Intervene when you feel like you shouldn’t and do not when you feel like you should.” That’s the rule number one of team coaching by Johannes. Maybe that one is something to remember now? Maybe not? Maybe we need to abandon all old theories and come up with something completely new by standing on the shoulders of the giant. I am curious. Also our Monkey Man Tatu is MC’ing the whole event!
Power Rangers, I am proud of you. I am sure this won’t be the last time we meet and we are about to engage into a new journey. Thank you!
Ps. Here are some more pictures about our process.
Ps2. I have been taking notes throughout the process, and made some notebooks on the go, so after putting them all together and maybe some further co-creation it will be published as a book or pamflet of some kind. That’s exciting, too.
Ps3. I will also ask Henna to write some’s reflections about this journey from a participant’s point of view.
Team Mastery Arena in Jyvaskyla in September
Aug 20th
We are in somewhat close relationship with the organizers of the Team Mastery Arena event coming up in Jyväskylä in 4 weeks. It’s organized by the folks of Team Academy, supported by Partus and SoL Finland. That if something should guarantee a good spirit!
This picture with Tatu, Ville and Matti the BatMan of DialogueLife is courtesy of the organizers of the event and its form their VIP customer event held a week ago. More of them in this link.
Monkey Business will be on stage with Tatu as the MC and Henna as a participant of the Team Mastery 2 whom will be the main ingredient for the second day summing it all up together all together with every participant. I am excited if I have understand it all right, and how it’s going to end up.
We’ve negotiated a special deal for the Monkey Business’ friends! Sorry, no discounts this time, but when registering, if you add to the field allergies etc. (for meals) “I like bananas!” we will provide you with a free notebook in the event.
Keep it Yellow! Ville
Building Co-creation and Partnerships
Aug 19th
Hey there,
Thanks for everyone who participated in Monkey Business Summer Days 2009. These were the first, and next year they maybe will be bigger and better. Now we know more about ourselves, you and the places such as forests of Uurainen and Iisalmi. Good staff. Tatu wanted to say Giitu giitu which is Saami language and means thank you. So Tatu’s thanks goes for…
Ville – Courage to take leadership related to the Summer Days
Johanna – borrowing her Grandma’s place
Henna – the excellent excursion to Iisalmi
Janne – the great meatballs
Hugo – clap on the shoulder
Hanne – smile
And everybody for participation, understanding, building a shared dream and patience to help Tatu (and us all) to learn.
I wanted also to ask you some tips and ideas when building a partnership with another business. We have a meeting tomorrow morning at 9 am with one company and there are some questions in my head. Please comment and help us.
1. What is the value we can create to company X?
2. What is the value they can offer to us?
3. What are the rules for the co-creation? (Prahalad proposes in his book Competing for the Future DART model referring to Dialogue, Access to information, Risk assesment and sharing and Transparency – I think this is a good starting point).
4. Why co-operation works and why not?
5. Why with some partners it’s sometimes difficult to give your everything?
Loads of yellow regards,
Ville
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