Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance [Paperback]

Jonas Ridderstrale (Author), Kjelle A. Nordstrom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 10, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0273659073 | ISBN-13: 978-0273659075 | Edition: 2nd

BUSINESS AS USUAL? FUNK THAT "In a world of suits, Nordstrom and Ridderstrale's message is refreshingly different." "Business Strategy Review," The Greatest Business Books of All Time" "Funky Business gives a unique, informed and defiantly Funky perspective on the new world order. It is the antidote to bland writing and bland thinking." - "Tom Peters "Funky Business - the groovy bible of modern business philosophy" "- Red magazine In the best-selling Funky Business Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale launch a manifesto for "difference" in business. " Move it." In 1995, 1000 new soft drinks were launched on the Japanese market. A year later, 1% of them were still for sale. " Move it fast. "If you are driving a 1990 model car, approximately six years were spent developing it. Today, most companies do that job in two years. " Move it faster. "At Hewlett Packard, the majority revenues come from products that did not exist a year age. " Move it now. "In Tokyo, you can order a customized Toyota on Monday and be driving it on Friday. More products, more markets, more people, more competition. In a world of abundance and excess, competition is total and competition is personal.Difference rules. If you think about it, most of what your business does could be bought from someone else using the Yellow Pages or an Internet search engine. How are you going to be attractive? By being more efficient? By doing it cheaper? Come on! This is the age of time and talent, where we are selling time and talent, exploiting time and talent, hiring time and talent, packaging time and talent. Today, the "critical resources" wear shoes and walk out the door around 5.30pm every day. Karl Marx was right; the workers should own the critical means of production - it's small, gray and weighs about 1.3 kilograms. It will move markets and it will make capital dance. Only talent will allow you to be unique, to escape business as usual. In this world we need business as unusual. We need innovative business. We need unpredictable business. We need Funky Business. This is business book as unusual. "Funky Business is a better book than most novels but it is not for bedtime. It will jerk you out of your complacency and make you question your very existence. It will transform your brain." " - Customer Management Are you ready to let your talent make capital dance?

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Oh dear. A book called Funky Business by two Swedish academics. At first glance, it has all the allure of Benny and Bjorn's (from Abba) sadly never-released concept album about life as a middle manger in a multinational conglomerate. There is something earnestly hip about the way Kjell Nordström and Jonas Ridderstråle of the Stockholm School of Economics present themselves. "They do gigs not seminars. These gigs sell out. They have shaved heads and wear black," says the blurb.

But that's what makes Funky Business worth reading. It's not so much the novelty of the authors' argument, which boils down to the notion that in an oversupplied world, ideas are what separate successful companies and individuals from failures. Rather, it's the vitality of their argument and the rhythm of their language that make their ideas so compelling. "Traditional roles, jobs, skills, ways of doing things, insights, strategies, aspirations, fears, and expectations no longer count. In this environment, we cannot have business as usual. We need business as unusual. We need different business. We need innovative business. We need unpredictable business. We need surprising business. We need funky business."

The book, which is almost a virtuoso display of rhetoric and intellectual power, bursts at the seams with the force of its argument and the weight of its colorful evidence. Sources quoted range from the pope to the British band the Prodigy. Funky, Inc., they say, "isn't like any other company. It is not a dull, old conglomerate. It is not a rigid bureaucracy. It is an organization that actually thrives on the changing circumstances and unpredictability of our times."

This is great entertainment. But the slick veneer does not invalidate the way the book pulls together many existing strands of thought about how business is developing and evokes a coherent and intriguing vision of a future whose main feature will be incoherence.

This really is one for the whole family. Or at least those old enough to have a job. --Alex Benady --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Funky Business is the antidote to bland writing and bland thinking." Tom Peters "Could barely, literally put down, Funky Business."Warren Bennis "The gospel of the new thinking is Funky Business" "- "Industry Standard" "It's the best un-businesslike business book I have ever read ...Funky Business is less of a business handbook and more of a religion. It should be treated like a chain letter - read it and pass it onto 10 other people." (or even better, tell 10 other people to buy it) ... This book should carry a government health warning: Read with care - this book will seriously blow your mind. Go on, read it, be a devil - after all, you only live once." - "Human Resources" "You know when Time magazine trumps the rebirth of design on its from cover that something's up. You know too that the world of "boring is best commerce" is taking note of change when books like Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordstrom's Funky Business hits the best-seller lists." - Viewpoint magazine "Funky Business is a better book than most novels but it is not for bedtime. It will jerk you out of your complacency and make you question your very existence. It will transform your brain"." - Customer Management" "This is the New Economy's Killer Book!" Some say they can't put a certain book down. This one I had to - regularly - in order to recover from the impact of the statement I had just read. I'm in the Internet business and thought I understood plenty about the New Economy. But this book didn't just open my eyes, it ripped them out and tossed them high in the sky!" - Rich Preece , Hamburg, Germany, Amazon Customer Services "Funky Business - the groovy bible of modern business philosophy" - Red magazine "The sweat-shirted Mr Ridderstrale has become the antidote to the graph-wielding business academics on the lecture circuit." "Richard Donkin, The Financial Times" "What I've found really thought-provoking has been "Funky Business "by Ridderstrale and Nordstrom - this is so well-written and entertaining, and it conveys some pretty heavy messages such as business and the world will never be the same again, now values are changing the impact of technology, and the new society which is evolving. " "- Paul Mosson, Director of HR at Dewar's" "The reader will see that this book has a lot to say, and says it clearly, provocatively and breathlessly. Some of the analysis has been done before, and better, but the particular vision of funkiness is worth having to hand."- "Martin Ward, Knowledge Management"

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Financal Times Management; 2nd edition (December 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0273659073
• ISBN-13: 978-0273659075
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,231,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Action Book July 1, 2002

By Denis Cherkasov

Format:Paperback

Move it.
Move it fast.
Move it faster.
Move it now.

These are the words, which summarize all the 245 pages of the book and energize them. Although casual in style and easy-to-understand in language, Funky Business is yet a profound and philosophical survey of the recent shift of basic values in social and business structures of the global society. Those, who understand the spirit and emotions of Mission Impossible II or Swordfish - Password Accepted, will definitely appreciate both the style and the message. For the `businessmen', who love ACID Jazz the message of the book is also easy to catch. The other guys may miss it out.

True, none of the business concepts, exposed in the book is new to the business community. But the authors created the brand new vision of the modern business through hy-phe-nation (as they describe the phenomenon themselves) of the latest ideas. Only such a weird combination of ideas helped them to produce the most beautiful (and harmonious?) description of a competitive advantage I ever learnt: "Competitive advantages weigh no more than the dreams of a butterfly". I understood the vitality of this phrase when I heard one of businessman in Russia (not oil, timber or caviar tycoon) telling, that he is "dedicated to the quality of idea in his business, because the highest quality of idea is the only thing impossible to be replicated immediately". And this gives him a competitive advantage. Once again: it was asserted not from the sends of California, but from the woods of Russia. What else should be said or done to prove the unambiguous victory of Forces of Funk throughout the world?

But above all, this is not the book to read, to learn and to forget. This is the ACTION book. It wakes up those who haven't yet understood that Future Just Happened. And it puts more pressure on those who are already awoken in order to move faster. My judgement is that Funky Business is a must-read for everyone in business: from an intern to the CEO. We already did it in our office. Every newcomer MUST read Funky Business in a bid to speak with his peers and bosses (very few, really) in the same language.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars A Big Funky Waste of Time January 10, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

This book is an extended riff on a hodgepodge of topics - technology, globalization, competitive advantage, organizational structures, hierarchy, fragmentation - that is filled with sweeping generalizations (with little background evidence), sloppy use of terminology, ill-considered formulations (such as saying that Manpower, Inc. is "essentially" a big international trade union), business literature clichés, and the construction of nonsense terms that substitute for rigorous intellectual thought. The authors, two professors at the Stockholm School of Economics, argue that the entire world is now governed by the "forces of funk," a term that they never define in a coherent fashion. All companies must become "funky" or they will be driven out of business.

The "funky" corporation advocated by the authors bears some resemblance to the "visionary company" described in Built To Last (Collins and Porras 1994), notably in the necessity of firms having a core ideology, encouraging innovation and tapping the creativity of its employees. Otherwise, the model "funky" corporation is "narrow, focused on one or just a handful of core businesses" (p. 132), designed to leverage the accumulated knowledge of its workforce and partners, consistently innovative, and organized to contain "many hierarchies of different kinds" (p. 168). To create such organizations, managers must offer "meaningful leadership" that welcomes experimentation, promotes continuous learning, hires from diverse "tribes" of people, and creates value by building upon the "economies of soul."

Overall, this is an annoying and intellectually sloppy book that presents no original research and adds little to our understanding of how organizations need to adjust to the realities of the network society.

25 of 33 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Funk makes people dance April 24, 2000

By Magnus Lindkvist

Format:Paperback

Back in 1982, a little known band called Pseudo Echo recorded "Funky Town". The band disappeared but the song has often resurfaced on dancefloors and playlists alike. Funk was THE term in the music business in the late 70's/ early 80's. It had spilled over from the afro-american community into the mainstream and spawned artists with more or less staying power than Pseudo Echo. This bears more than little resemblance to the book by Nordenstrom and Ridderstrale. Business has always been fascinated by the music industry's way of marketing the artists it has endowed or penalized the world with. Whereas funk was the music industry's darling offspring 20 years ago, today it is embraced by the business community and management guru's alike whether it be called "The New Economy", "Branding" or "Competing with intangibles". Funky Business is very much a zeitgeist book, much like the Pseudo Echo hit was representative of its day and age in 1982. Nordenstrom and Ridderstrale have done their homework in more ways than one. They have done extensive research (what do you expect from career academics?) and litter their book with ideas from academia's finest of the last 30 years; the parallel to Karl Marx being right about workers owning the means of production, for instance, was coined by Charles Handy. This aspect gives their work credibility, something that management literature often lacks. Nordenstrom and Ridderstrale also realize that packaging is more important than content, in line with Funky Business's idea that competition today is based more on design than on functionality. Hence, they shave their heads and present their book more as a manifest than a traditional management book; Although clumsily designed, pages with psycho-babble mantras like "condemned to freedom" are a welcome relief to the 400-page bricks delivered by people like Tom Peters or Peter Senge every other year. The result is a management book that in more ways than one resembles songs like "Funky Town" or "YMCA"': user-friendly, light weight and accessible to many different people. Nordenstrom and Ridderstrale is the business world's answer to groups like Pseudo Echo; they create a link between the elitist world of management gurus and the regular Joe Schmoe who's only looking for some inspiration. Whether they have more staying power than their music industry equivalents remains to be seen.