Finland’s Solution for Economic Turnaround

5.11.2009 at Otaniemi Forum organized by VTT, TKK, Otaniemi.fi, and AmCham.

The debate has just begun on Finland’s Solution for Economic Turnaround. The theme goes like this: Technology, Business, Design…and I would like to add the PEOPLE as knowledge worker. Without that the notion of creating competitive edge is a dream!!

The program was divided into two sections : Finnish and English presentations. The speakers during Finnish part were Jaakko Pellosniemi of Mobidiag, Ismo Rantala of Finnish Mobile Association and Mikko Kalhama of Design Forum Finland. Jaakko had a view of Government not doing enough and he used the literature to analyze Finland’s situation. Michale Porter’s Competitive Advantage of Nations argues that Government to become facilitator not the controller. Marching of public sector and private sector is not in harmony… He thinks that Mobidiag’s innovation will be a grand success!!

On the other hand Ismo Rantala revisted Slush Helsinki 2009 an event just unfolded. This event has just introduced Finland to the world as innovation hub. The locus of innovation is shifting from Silicon Valley to the northern hemisphere–stay tuned!!

Mikko Kalhama wants to see design as a core competence for Finland and Design as innovation enabler from the artistic heroes. The movement has just begun!! In Finnish he says–’koolla ei ole väliä’. You can use google translate to see what does it mean!!

Well the english part started after a debate session of Finnish part where experts from various sectors e.g. Aalto University, VTT and alike were asking tough questions and commenting on the presentations.

The Fun part began with new entrants (English speaking group)!! The presenters during this session were Ludovic Gaudé, Zokem; Rob Kommeren, Philips Innohub; Marco Steinberg, Sitra. The session had a theme of FINLAND’S UPTURN!!

Gaudé shared the idea if international entrepreneur’s path to Finland–why he chose Finland as a top destination for innovation!! Having worked with Nokia and Google and in different locations across the continent, he found Finnishness as a way of innovation. He thinks Zokem can be a huge success but he just does agile planning and of course with Fun. He has a passionate team of diversified people which can make things happen easily…

Kommeren talked about moving from Singapore to Finalnd and why Philips chose Finland as its next innovation Hub. Steinberg took the audience in mesmerizing surprises by showing how Design can be applied in strategic decision making. Mind it –it is not Process!! Steinberg is an active participant in numerous national innovation programs to promote industry competitiveness through design research.

The program was hosted by very competent Kristiina Helenius, AmCham Finland’s Director. At the end I would like to thank the organizers for the best event so far in Otaniemi Marketing’s history…My call is to gather impact analysis of such events…Please send your comments how you benefited from such coverage and events!! For me this event turned out to be a turning point!!

Social Media in Business–The Flat World Effect

Social media has made the flat world concept of Tom Freidmann a reality. Social Media can create a next wave of competitive advantage for Finnish companies and public sector organizations, says, Mikko Kosonen, President, Sitra. The task of educating the business leaders is a challenging one. This movement has just begun as various social media organizations are emerging.

Dell, Cisco, Accenture and even Nokia are embracing the social media as a medium to apply TEL (Talk, Engage and Learn) model in their daily dialogue not only inside the organization but with the suppliers and customers alike.

Obama proved that social media can be used for political gain, but also that is an effective tool not only for conversing with potential voters but as a feedback tool. So it is not only in politics this TEL model is valid in any business domain and other domains alike.

If any nation sets its priority to embrace these emerging concepts, she will march on the competitive edge where social capital is harnessed to the fullest…BE with the revolution!!

Finland recognizes that social media as the next wave of collaboration but there are challenges of legacy silos and slow progress in creating value-adding networks. There is a huge potential and benefits of collaboration in Finland through social media. Due to social media becoming a strategic choice of enabler, Nokia is changing. Ovi.com has ushered a new age of mobile 2.0 services. Nokia takes center stage on future social media solutions and implementation models.

Similarly, there are new business opportunities created by social media–from facebook to linkedIn wherever you are the engagement and dialogue and knowledge creation and dissemination is happening without the vertical layers of organization blocking the communication. An employee can interact directly with the CEO, an end user has ease of sharing his experiences and feedback…well the value creation and capturing has not been so easy before…

Network Experiences with creating a shared mission driven by collaborative business partnership networks have enabled possibilities for engaging your employees and clients in business collaboration. This is the new communication solution for enterprises and the new role of traditional bit pipe telecom operator has emerged to become partner with the customers. The communication intensive solution platforms are changing the game how we create differentiation and low cost at the same time. The blue ocean notion of strategy is becoming reality due to social media.

Cisco is a grand success in using social media in creating collaboration ecosystems and we will monitor them how they will go ahead. The notion of involving employees, customers and partners in collaboration is happening at fast pace. Who will shape the future of enterprise 2.0 platforms is a key question at the moment. After all getting awareness among the people not only for personal touch but for business engagement is a phenomenon in itself. The snowball effect is happening already. There are various questions such as how to create attention, engagement and collaboration? How to listen your networks and build iterative success model etc..?

Just to be updated with the future of collaboration and the see the collaboration and knowledge sharing space for enterprises in social media get tuned at http://www.kaseysocial.com/.

Innovation Intentions

Ideas Come From Everywhere

Give Ideas Credit, Not Credit for Ideas

Work with Smart People

License to Pursue Dreams

Learning From Mistakes

Data is Apolitical

Creativity Loves Constraint

Bank Users, Not Money

Don’t Kill Projects; Morph Them

Survive the recession…

THESE ARE THE TECHNIQUES GOOGLE IS USING…(Source: Stanford University)

No leaders, no hierarchy, no managers….

Gary Hamel, a prominent thinker on strategy and management recently quoted the following: WL Gore, where there are no leaders, no hierarchy, no managers. Every employee has the right to say no to anything they want with no repercussions, the theory being then people only would be working on things they felt passionate about. At year’s end, 20 of your peers review your work for its value proposition, and your compensation is set accordingly. Isn’t it great?

I am actually using this logic in one of the start-ups I am mentoring. So far so good. I will share the result after the observation period ends. The biggest challenge in this model is how to balance creativity and efficiency..

MicroNokia?

Two giants Nokia and Microsoft are getting into partnership for the enterprise mobile market.

The press release says that “the two companies will collaborate on the design, development and marketing of mobile enterprise platforms including Microsoft Office Mobile and other business communications, collaboration and device management software for Symbian devices.”

2010 has been the target date to hit the market with new products based on this partnership. Microsoft business division president Stephen Elop said the deal would focus on email, collaboration, Web 2.0, SharePoint, Instant Messaging, presence and other rich office mobile applications, including the ability to view, edit, create and share Office documents with mobile-optimised versions of Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft OneNote.

What does this alliance means?

There has been incidences where Microsoft has been creating monopoly in the industry it aims to embark on. So far mobile industry has been the biggest challenge–simply Nokia has been strong despite the attempts from the Redmond.

This alliance clearly demonstrates the notion raised by Geoffrey Moore: Focus on core and outsource/do partnership for the rest!! Unfortunately, Microsoft is on the loosing side in this partnership. The collision of Microsoft and Google on mobile domain has just BEGUN as MicroNokia relationship starts to take shape!!

Microsoft’s Failed Strategies

John Dvorak, a famous tech writer looks at Microsoft’s failed strategies and I thought of connecting it with Apple 2.0 Blog

Then, in the meat of his argument, he ticks off 10 of these “bright and shiny objects.” he quotes:

* Years ago in the pre-Internet era, AOL was the talk of the town, so Microsoft had to copy it with MSN. No money was made; no strategic advantage was gained.
* Netscape was the rage for a while, so Microsoft threw together a browser and got in that business. The browser was given away for free. No money was made; the strategy got the company in trouble with government trustbusters.
* During the early days of the Internet, new online publications appeared. Microsoft decided to become a publisher too, rolling out a slew of online properties including a computer magazine and a women’s magazine. They were all folded.
* Computer books became popular; Microsoft began Microsoft Press. After an early splash and success, the company soon lost interest and the division now languishes.
* Teddy Ruxpin became a hot toy. Microsoft rolled out a couple of robotic plush toys, including the creepy Barney the Dinosaur who sang “I love you and you love me.” The company soon lost interest and dropped the whole thing.
* AOL-TV appeared, along with other device-centric TV-delivery mechanisms in the 1990s. Microsoft created a Microsoft-TV division as well as a device. It soon lost interest.
* Adobe Photoshop became a huge success, so Microsoft hired Alvy Ray Smith to develop photo-editing software. Smith quit when the company lost interest in the idea.
* Yahoo and Google showed that a search engine could be a money maker, so Microsoft copied that idea; it now has Bing.
* Cloud applications are currently trendy, along with notions about software as a service. Microsoft decides to go into that business.
* The Apple rolled out a MP3 player, the iPod. Microsoft came up with its own MP3 player, the Zune. The company also says it wants to stream music.

“This is a company that began making development tools for programmers,” he concludes. “Does anyone see a pattern here?” A billion dollar Question!!

Productivity Enhancement through Software

The future of productivity enhancement through software is bright. The whole software industry is innovating various applications in this area. The recent thinking shows that start-ups are being created to build an extensible enterprise productivity suite and a high-level open-source software development toolkit, built for the Web. At least the Moskovitz (who co-founded Facebook) and Rosenstein are in this mission. The whole community is watching what will be coming from the minds of social networking pioneers. I am sure these thinking are guided to address the ever growing aspirations of Y-Generation workforce.

Basics of Entrepreneurship: NABCF

Recently, I attended a lecture at Helsinki Entrepreneurship Academy and a renowned professor summarized the basics of entrepreneurship as following;

The entrepreneur must think as per the following framework called NABCF….

NEED; BASIC AND LATENT NEED THINKING INTO BLUE OCEAN

APPROACH: UNIQUE ONE

BENEFITS FOR THE END USERS

CUSTOMER INTIMACY

FINANCIALS

One serial entrepreneur at the session pointed out that he hardly writes plans but he uses flipchart to answer these issues and uses the iPhone pictures for further meetings. He writes the plan only when he needs to see VCs.

Virtuous Leadership: An Agenda for Personal Excellence

Virtuous Leadership: An Agenda for Personal Excellence by Alexandre Havard is a book on leadership that leaders require followers and why should anyone follow a leader? Havard says that there seems to be an eternal tension between followers and leaders because there is a clash or at least a confrontation of wills. A leader who depends on coercion or manipulative techniques may achieve certain objectives but only in a precise setting and given limited objectives. A military officer is handed position power and the force of authority along with assigned followers and may or may not bloom into a true leader over time. Likewise, a politician may rely on manipulation, personality, and scripted talking points to win office but that victory does not confer leadership status.

The “better man” theory of leadership has survived through history. The question that often went unasked is how does one become a better man? Alexandre Havard teaches us that leadership is service and service is virtue in action. The natural virtues are developed through an act of will. Developing virtue molds character and forms a leader. The authority of a true leader stems from the character they display which gives rise to trust. The natural tension between leaders and followers dissolves because followers know that their leader has their best interests at heart and they recognize in the leader a role model for their own character development.
Some of the reviewers have found it interesting that to the secular mind and also from the Christian perspective, the trait most often ascribed to leaders is “charisma”. A charism is a gift conferred through the grace of God. The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity are gifts of God. When they are combined with the natural virtues of judgment, courage, self-control, and justice plus the leadership virtues of magnanimity and humility, the result is a “better man” and a great leader. They say one does not need to be a CEO, NFL coach, or general to be a leader. We all function in a sphere in which leadership is desperately needed.

Innovation Radar

In order to capture the disruptive innovations, companies like Intel to Nokia to Microsoft are using Innovation Radar . The main purpose of such a RADAR  is to track the new opportunities and new threats. In this process sensing of new ideas is carried out. The main objective is to get out of the box. For example Intel research has a budget to go to other firms and universities for research collaboration and such budget is allocated to different nodes e.g. universities in the range of 50 to 100 K USD. The idea is to go to many projects with small stakes. The day you announce you are funding a research project there will be thousands of grant applications in your mailbox.  By reading that you will figure out the NOISE in the market.

Intel Capital invest on Start-ups to keep track of technologies having breakthrough potentials. When you announce that you are going to fund ideas you will be loaded with business plans. In reading those you will figure out the trend in the industry and you can work on the brightest ideas and by creating competition you raise the radar even higher and you can figure out the hotspots.

To avoid the assimilation of outside innovation you need to engage the host company from early stage. Who ever thought that Google business model…free software with ad supported model would be a succees? But now you have billion dollar industry behind that business model.

So keep your RADAR powerful!! GO INNOVATE!!