Having a presentation is one of the best ways to learn. During the couple of years I have had many opportunities to have my presentation about weak signals in different forums and companies. The questions and comments from the audience are very valuable for me and they push me to think issues from various perspectives. One of the best comment I got was yesterday from one company I visited. When I showed my 5 bullet point ” weak signal test” (check the test for example from these slides) to the audience one person wanted to add an extra  bullet point to the test: if it is illeagal it is a weak signal…He further argued, that he used to be in business that was at one time somehow illeagal, but now it is the common way to operate. Good point!!

Another comment from that lecture was something like: “do you really mean that we should start to collect some stupid things (i.e. weak signals)..?” That good comment pushed me to really rethink about the concept stupid. What is stupid? I think that it is something that does not fit to our mental model. Stupid for you can be very relevant and important for somebody else. And when these people happen to be your major customer segment, you better rethink your concept of stupidity. And on the other hand, when you happen to familiriaze yourself with something stupid, it actually might make sense to you more.

I thought that mobile phones are stupid when I saw the first ones in the early 1990’s. Now I do not think that anymore.  I also considered computers to be stupid innovation in 1980’s, but today I use them all the time.

So be careful when you call something stupid. It might be big issue in the future!

It is nice to notice that I am not the only person with problems in spelling (specially with foreign languages). This sign was spotted at construction work place at Estonia. With almost perfect Finnish it warns about the sharks at the construction site (haita=sharks, haittaa= inconvenience).

A science book for kids. Topic: poo. Spotted from Suomalainen kirjakauppa.

A sign on a wall of the most boring bar I have ever been….

Some old ads from Valio (Finnish big dairy) where I visited today having a lecture. The cutest of all tells that “We serve here only cream (Finnish Milk propaganda office)” .

Times have really changed!!

I pegged the people in Valio to copy me these adds- I think that they are just marvellous and I really would like to have them haning on my kitchen wall)

Some time ago a news about a radio station for dogs appeared blogs around the world. The radiostation was located in Thailand. A similar type of miracle was spotted at Helsinki: an ad about radiostation for kids, Nappularadio (miracle= a new thing )According to the web pages of Nappularadio, they play nice children’s songs and at the evening time you can listen to tales. The radio station was born because of group of parents get tired of all the f* words from Finnish radio stations (refering to Radio Rock, I suppose??) and wanted to have a radio station for their kids, with stories and music suitable for them. It appears that the radio station is quite seasonal, so next time here in Helsinki area you can listen to it when the schools start again.

After spotting this kids’ radiostation I started to think that why this haven’t been here for longer time. Great idea!

From the topic of this post you might think that I am against recycling. No, I am not. Actually I am enthusiastic what it comes to recycling specially at home.  I just think that in Finland recycling for citizens is made too complex- which of couse degreases the amount of recycling.

I  recycle, even though it is not easy all the times. In my kitchen I have three litter baskets: one for mixed litter, one for energy waste and one for biowaste (which I compost). I also collect cardboard and magazines. Out of these different kind of waste recycling cardboard and magazines are the easiest. The nearest place to put out magazines (paper waste) is located only some hundred meters away. Compost I do have in my own yard (so no problem with biowaste), but energy waste is the most difficult! The amount of energy waste in my family seem to be enourmous: it consists mainly of packaging waste. There exists a shopping mall about 10 kilometers from my home that accepts all kind of waste- luckily energy waste too- but it has maximum limits of 2 small bags of waste (I have at least about 5 each time).  Another possibility to recycle energywaste is to drive even further with a “mini van” to a dump (Sorttiasema) where they sort enerey waste too. Does not sound very ecological!

In my opinion all the shops should have waste containers for various types of waste for their consumers. In Finland shops that sell domestic appliances are taking back old domestic appliances for recycling from customers. Grocery and other shops should also take care of the packaging waste by providing recycling waste bins for their customers.

Image: My way to recycle

Image: Gaming African Catchment game, Turku 2008. 

Two weeks ago I had a nice opportunity to participate African Catchment Game session in Turku. The teachers or managars of that game came all the way from South Africa to teach our group how people are surviving in the rural area in African villages. In the beginning of the game all the participants were given a role in the game. I wanted to be a refugee, which was the poorest position one can get, but unfortunately in this game there was not enough people for that (usually there is). So my role was a peasent farmer. Me and my friend Maria formed a farm together and the manager of the game gave us so and so many people to be fed and to work in the farm. What we learned after the first round (year) of playing, the most important part in the game is water. Water was needed (as in ordinary life too) for drinking, and farming. Other wise you start to loose your family.

The game consisted of three type of actors: the city people (industrialists, government people, trader etc.) the middle men (sales person and buyer) and the rural area people (which I belonged to).  We were trading stuff with city people- of course they needed food which we produced. We, the farmers, needed water, which could be bought from the government people (we had awful drought in the villages all the time). We also bought pestisides and fertilizers from the industrialists and cows (mainly imported to the country). Simulation game appeared to be very interesting and educational way of learning. It was so interesting that I would have like to spend another day gaming too.  

 Here are some images of the game session.

Image: My farm

Image: Tokens

Why shoud learning be boring when it can be fun and inspirating? What I am enthusiastic about is gaming, specially Monopoly. Last year when planning a business foresight course (for about 6th time) to Korean business people coming to Finland to study in MBa program at Helsinki School of Economics, I really started to think about teaching, in more innovative and inspirating way. I came up with an idea to combine futures teaching to Monopoly in the future. So last year my Korean student designed a whole new gameboard for future Korean Monopoly 2023. It included training in megatrends, trends, weak signals, wild cards, making scenarios and planning businesses for certain scenarios. The students had to also think about future monetary system and tokens- of course. The Korean students really loved to design their own game board while at the same time learning the basics in business foresight!

On tuesday I am about to teach some business people, designers, in a big Finnish Company. This time we design a game board for a game: Futuropoly. That is now my new concept of teaching. Check it here (sorry, in Finnish)!