Funky Business [Tapa blanda]

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.

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.

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.