One of the evening’s high lights for us was being given the Revolution-award. We didn’t find out or hear what the criteria for this award was, but I guess the name of the prize tells it all! 2012 truly is the year of “DO THE NEVER”!

We want to send out humble `thank you` for all of those who voted us. So here it comes; THANK YOU!

(About voting; today is the election day here in Finland. We vote for new president. I hope that `DO THE NEVER` theme continues throughout the weekend. To the ballot box!)

The picture is licensed with Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License so feel free to use it when appropriate. For a higher quality version get in touch with Ville.

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// Minnaisa Monkey

4th of October 2007, Rovaniemi.

I think we’ve learnt quite a lot. But what I know for sure, there’s so much more to learn. About monkeys. About business. And about life. Enjoy the Autumn everybody!

To be honest, I had planned moving to Turku for a year before I finally did it. Luckily I did not have to move alone, my long-term boyfriend Pekka joined me and has been so supportive during these first months. I am also privileged to have some amazing friends here, and they have helped me to feel like home here.

This has been an overwhelmingly busy spring – I was travelling around the world with my team company Co-op unelMania form 23rd of January to 28th of March. After the trip I managed to finalize my studies and final thesis – all this in one month. In May it was time to move to Turku, set up my own company and join the yellow world of the Monkey Business. What will I be doing here in Turku as a Monkey? Well, stay tuned, I’ll keep you posted..

Now that I look back what have happened in April, May and early June – I still can’t really believe I managed to do all this. Yet here I am- fresh, new monkey-entrepreneur in new city, Turku, with graduation papers in my hand. Like my sister said it; “Now you are done with the University, it is time to head towards new challenges.” She had also cut a picture of a brave little mouse and taped it to the congratulation card – Mickey Mouse with a text; “See anything you do as an adventure” It feel like it is a good guideline for the near future with the Monkeys!

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.

SOL Palvelut, a big grown Finnish service business offering laundry, clean-up and staff leasing services, employing 9000 people in 4 different countries and having made a turnover of 157 million euros in 2009. In SOL yellow means the sunny positivity and the culture of freedom and responsibility. Employees can decide how they want to work and what kind of working environment they like. They were in charge of the decoration in the headquarters, too, and therefore SOL City, the uniquely and wildly designed headquarters of the company, is one of the most desired visiting destinations for the international business groups visiting Helsinki. In the past I worked for SOL Palvelut, and still remember the very positive working culture in there. I felt like part of the team and responsible, but free from the 8am to 4pm routines and having all the power to improve my work and be in direct contact with our partners every day. It was seriously yellow.

DHL Express, a German transportation company offering tailored, customer-focused solutions for managing and transporting letters, goods and information. This company made it to this list for two recent reasons. Firstly because we spotted it’s yellow transporter at our yellow office parking place, delivering goods for one of the companies we are neighboring, and secondly because it offered us a smooth solution for serving our superheroe guest when she left to Paris forgetting her iPhone in Finland. DHL delivered it to her to Paris overnight, taking a service time of 10 hours with a price of 155,55 euros. 7 hours delivery would have also been available. Why DHL is recommendable for anyone in need of express delivery? 1) It transports phone batteries, unlike the express delivery operator recommended by the Finnish main post service Itella, for example. 2) Even being a German company, has it’s web pages nicely in Finnish unlike it’s US competitor FedEx, for example. These primary reasons made us to choose for DHL, and surely we supported the yellow color, too.

Eniro with yellow Pages. Not so long ago I received a phonecall from Eniro, the leading contact search company in the Nordic media market listed in Swedish stock. Eniro was renewing it’s Yellow Pages direct search media, and asked if Monkey Business wanted to be found from there. It could have been a traditional sales call, but the first line, a question of Eniro’s agent, changed the system radically. She asked: What is this Monkey Business doing? I went: We make the world more yellow by improving supportive communication systems. She replied: Hhmmm…ahhaa, sounding like trying to construct a thought in her head before voicing it out: “Then we are in the same business! Eniro Yellow Pages is trying to make the world more yellow by improving the communication systems by creating the connections between people.” It was a good talk with the senior sales agent of Eniro who made me think that in fact it would be cool to do one joint project with Eniro. As a company, Eniro plays in another league, but we share the yellow!

These were just some examples of the yellow and serious brands. What we as Monkey Business mean and want to communicate with the yellow color is that we are all about serious fun, positivity and good vibes in communication. Yellow is the mood of action that produces good feeling and good results by empowering people.

Can you name and describe more examples of the serious yellow companies?

With all my yellow (as Johanna would say!),

Henna Monkey

P.S. Bananas are yellow, too. And very serious business, too.

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?