Product Description

BUSINESS AS USUAL? FUNK THAT

"The gospel of the new thinking is Funky Business" - Industry Standard "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 "... the duo launch into a poweful critique of new business realities. This is not what business people learned at Harvard Business School." "The launch of their book, Funky Business, may mark Nordstrum and Ridderstrale's promotion to the major guru league." 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 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

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #266045 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-14
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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 very earnestly hip about the way that Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale 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 its argument--which boils down to the idea that in an oversupplied world, ideas are what separate successful companies and successful individuals from the failures. It is the vitality of the argument and, dare I say it, the rhythm of the language that make it 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 exuberant force of its argument and the weight of its highly colourful supporting evidence. Sources quoted range from the Pope to 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 organisation 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 that 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 all the family. Or at least all those old enough to have a job. --Alex Benady

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

"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 aus Hamburg, Germany, Amazon Customer Services "Funky Business - the groovy bible of modern business philosophy" Red magazine "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

Synopsis
BUSINESS AS USUAL? FUNK THAT ""The gospel of the new thinking is Funky Business" "- Industry Standard ""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 ""...the duo launch into a poweful critique of new business realities. This is not what business people learned at Harvard Business School"." ""The launch of their book, Funky Business, may mark Nordstrum and Ridderstrale's promotion to the major guru league."" "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 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

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Customer Reviews

no substance
I bought the book for a train travel and I ended up throwing it to the garbage bin and enjoying the view.

The book doesn't have any insight or real content, just a bunch of flashy sentences as "the competitive advantages now last as long as the dreams of a butterfly"... "we need humanagement instead of management"... "the most important asset you have is your brain"... don't expect to actually learn anything from this book, unless maybe how to write for pages and pages without saying actually anything.

Go on, get inspired
Ok put it simply... I L O V E this book.
And yeah, its a "management book" although not like the ones I read when at Business School a few years back (which would have made it more fun).

I have read and re-read it countless times and dip into it for inspiration and energy. It has lived either on my work desk or close to hand for the last 6 or 7 years whereas ALL my other "management bibles" (with the exception of a couple of later Tom Peters rants)went to the local charity shop.

I even went so far as buying about 15 copies of it for work collegues a couple of years ago to get them turned on to it as well.

Hey! what bigger compliment can I give.

What you waiting for? Press the button.

strong book that is worth reading
if you are tired of all those academics telling you how to approach your customer, deal with your employer/employee, etc., this book gives you a fresh idea of where the world is going, why and how things are changing, and what we are likely to expect in the near future. the only downside is that the book mainly deals with the post-modern markets of western europe and north america, while just mentioning a few unimportant things about the changes in other parts of this ever getting smaller world.