Funky Business: Talent Makes Capital Dance

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.

FUNKSTR 1 KJELL NORDSTRÖM Kjell is based at the Institute of International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics. He received his PhD before helping to found the prestigious Advanced Management Program, which attracts the elite of Scandinavian business leaders. His research has focused on internationalization, and, his ideas work; he makes things happen. He is also on the board of directors of Stokke Fabrikker, Swedish Internet company Spary Ventures and US digital change agent Razorfish. His advice has been key to many other organizations across the globe.

FUNKSTER 2 JONES RIDDERSTRÅLE'S Based at the Center for Advanced Studies in Leadership at the Stockholm School of Economics, Jonas is at the forefront of the new generation of European-based business gurus. He has an MBA, a doctorate and a book on global innovation under his belt. He has run the Advanced Management Program and has been lecturer, adviser and consultant to many international companies - enabling them to look to the future creatively and develop dynamic strategies and solutions. In his spare time (yes really) he is an art collector and backs one of Sweden's funkiest galleries.

You can visit the funksters at www.funkybusiness.com