Look Beyond Change: Cirque de Soleil of Biz Speakers in Helsinki

On Friday I had the pleasure of attending Tom Peters’ wonderful seminar in Kalastajatorppa, Helsinki. The topic of the seminar was set to be Look Beyond Change: New Markets, New Trends and Pursuit of Excellence.

When I registered to the event in early February, I contemplated the decision to go, as I hadn’t had really looked hard into Mr. Peters’ material (shame on me) before and the attendance fee was fairly large. During the week, I listened through Re-Imagine!: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age, Peters’ latest ground-breaking book, to get acquainted with his ideas and thinking, preparing myself for Friday. By 10 o’clock Friday morning, I knew that I’d made the right investment and the decision to attend.

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Back In A Few

I haven’t been posting much recently. As a matter of fact, it’s been nine days since the last post and the silence will continue for at least for the week. Couple of delivery deadlines are approaching or in the near horizon so the projects at Kisko Labs have kept me busy.

However, I’ve pulled out the year 2005 issues of Harvard Business Review for coffee table reading material and I’m anxious to finish my Sun Tzu series so I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, you might want to check some coverage on Twitter and its adoption in Nordic countries.

Twitter catches up to Digg (in web site traffic)

European companies don’t like Twitter. Should they?

Twitter hitting mainstream in Sweden

Finnish companies using Twitter

Should Finnish companies use Twitter?(poll)

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Take It and Make It Your Own – How to Steal a Business Idea and Make It Flourish

I have recently often picked up the book on hardball business strategies as I’ve researched for my Sun Tzu series. In the latest stratagem piece I talked about two hardball strategies. In the book sandwiched (literally) between them was another interesting hardball strategy, Take It and Make It Your Own.

Take It and Make It Your Own

Take It and Make It Your Own means that you recognize the value of an existing idea, practice or business model and make it your own, improve and strengthen the concept and run with it. If you are a hardball player, you are always on the lookout for ideas that you can adopt or adapt to your own business.

This means that you are an avid student of trade practices, pricing schemes, technologies, marketing and selling methods, customer service programs and other facets of business that are better than your own not just in your own industry and among competitors, but across industries and markets. Often new radical business innovations in a particular market are actually imported and adapted from another industry where they have been staple practice for years or even decades.

Meanwhile in the real world, Kisko Labs has gotten involved in two business development projects where we would be playing our own version of this hardball strategy with existing players in the market should the projects go forward as anticipated and planned. Here’s a couple of tips from the book and a few personal thoughts how to adapt an idea to your business and make it flourish.

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Stratagems #4 and #5: Surprise, deception and deceit (Sun Tzu Series)

This is fourth installment of my Sun Tzu Stratagems series.

Boy, do these stratagems ever get a lot of love from Sun Tzu. Where to start, right? The Art of War is full of strategies and insights that include elements of surprise, deception and deceit. From doing battle and planning a siege to maneuvering armies, surprise and deception appear everywhere in Sun Tzu’s thinking.

We’ll look into some of the insights from Sun Tzu and visit how Japanese automakers played hardball with the Big Three automakers of Detroit.

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Twitter Squatters: 87 of 100 Best Global Brands Have Lost Their Brand Name on Twitter

The parasites are already on Twitter.

Of course, I’m talking about screen name squatters, people who reserve brand names, real names, anything more valuable than their own sorry behinds.

Victims of Twitter screen name squatting include Britney Spears (although she has “reclaimed” britneyspears), Shaquille O’Neal (nowadays tweets as THE_REAL_SHAQ), Google and Apple.

Today I was working on a new business venture idea and compiled a short-list of possible partners that I’d like to work on this idea should I ever go forward with it. As I’ve been using Twitter quite a bit recently, I decided to check whether this brand had a presence on Twitter, just for kicks.

I was shocked to find out the the brand name and its variation had already been reserved as screen names. The reason I was a bit shocked was that this brand isn’t quite a mainstream brand. Sure, a well-known one but still relatively a niche brand I would say. And when I mined this brand category further down, I discovered that some of the way more obscure brands than this first one were also taken.

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[fi] Tuotteistusta arkkitehtitoimistoille (osa 2)

Tämä artikkeli on jatkoa edelliseen postaukseen.
Olimme velipojan kanssa yhtä mieltä siitä, että arkkitehdillä on markkinointiongelma. Ennakkoluulot arkkitehdin työtä kohtaan ovat kovia: arkkitehdin käyttö suunnittelussa on työlästä ja kallista; suunnitteluprosessi on pitkä, hankala ja läpinäkymätön. Jälkimmäisessä voi olla jotain perääkin, mutta näistä ennakkoluuloista pitäisi päästä eroon tai ne pitäisi käsitellä. Ehkä palvelujakin voisi vähän avata maan [...]

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[fi] Tuotteistusta arkkitehtitoimistoille (osa 1)

Kirjoittelen toisinaan artikkeleita myös suomeksi – varsinkin, kun kohdeyleisö ja aihe sattuvat kohdalleen.
Velipoika piipahti perjantaina kylässä ollessaan paluumatkalla kertausharjoituksista kohti Oulua, jossa hän opiskelee arkkitehdiksi Oulun yliopistolla. Kahvimukien ääressä virisi keskustelu arkkitehdin työstä ja omakotitalon suunnittelun ostamisesta arkkitehdiltä.
Ollessani lokakuussa Suomen Yrittäjien järjestämällä Johtaminen ja markkinointi -risteilyllä tapasin laivalla erään kokkolalaisen arkkitehdin ja keskustelin hänen kanssaan [...]

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A short hiatus

I haven’t been following through on my Sun Tzu series on daily basis, but I hope you’ll excuse me as we had our second son and fifth child overall on Thursday, 18th of December.
I’ll be back soon after we resume the normal operations in our household.

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Meanwhile, in the Squanderville

If financial state of USA is shrouded with mystery to you, please watch this (30 minutes). After you’ve watched the movie, read this Bloomberg article. It might give you an idea what is or might be coming up in the next six months or so.
Via Robert Paterson

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Stratagem #3: Cohesion (Sun Tzu Series)

This is third installment of my Sun Tzu Stratagems series.
Stratagem #3: Cohesion
Cohesion – it’s an essential ingredient of any successful team, group, unit or formation. Without cohesion, no group of people can effectively and efficiently function and work towards a common goal. Therefore, building and maintaining cohesion is one of the most important tasks of [...]

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