Book Review: Sand Hill Road by Timo Ahopelto

Sand Hill Road by Timo Ahopelto isn't a type of a book I would easily select myself to be read. This book interested me due to the background story. Timo Ahopelto is one of the founders of CRF Health and this book follows loosely the history of first years of the company. The reason CRF Health interests me is that I've worked as consultant with them for more than a year. Some of the people of this partly fictive story still
work there. That said, my review of the book is bit biased since I know bit more about the company than regular reader will.

CRF Health was founded to solve the problem of using paper and pen to get information from patients during medical studies. Most of us have at some point answered some medical questionnaires in paper and this company has focused on using tablets and mobile phones for this data gathering. In this book there are many medical companies mentioned, but it doesn't go in to too much details of how the stuff technically works. This book tells more about the mental side of building a start-up.

Timo Ahopelto writes in quite living way and story goes forward really rapidly, almost too fast. Some times I found myself wondering what happened to this and that which was mentioned earlier in the book. There are few loose ends in the book, which I would have liked to get an answer at some point. Book is fun to read, but it mixes serious things with comical aspects so that I got bit lost about the idea behind the book. At first I thought it as teachful real life story, then bit as guide for new start-ups, also  at some point it takes a bit political viewpoint and at the end it turns more to the the fictive side.

I enjoyed all the sharp observations and opinions about start-ups and business life what Timo Ahopelto brings up in the book. Those small, one or two paragraph mentions, were really good additions to the book. I would like to read more of Timo Ahopelto's thought about business life and start-ups.

I recommend this book to at least all the Finns interested in different businesses and companies in Finland. It's hard to say what percentage of the book is fictional and how much of it is true. Still I believe it gives good view on what it might be to create successful company. It's an entertaining story, so it's easy and fun to read. It's a story of Finnish start-up success and that makes it important for so many.

P.S. I believe the book is currently only published in Finnish and I read it in Finnish.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Business Model Generation

I've been interested on business models for some time. I often try to understand what is important for companies for their success. For this interest I wanted to read Business Model Generation, highly appraised book about business models.

At first glance the book seemed bit too entertaining and easy to read for actually have valuable information. I admit being bit pessimistic to start reading it, but luckily I was wrong. Even though the design and layout of the book are far from normal business book, the actual content is 100% full of valuable information.

Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur have done a wonderful job of inventing and representing a good way to evaluate and invent business models. They also nicely compare their business model generation to other ways to evaluate business models.

Book is also filled with good real life examples of usage of business model generation and also mapping real life business models to the business model canvas, as they call it.

I think this book has raised to be one of the business books everyone needs to read. It's easy and fun to read and there is lot of value in different sections of the book. Authors have decided not to go deep in any of the subjects, but that's understandable for now. I bet they'll write another book going deeper in to the world of business models in the future.

I highly recommend the book for everyone, it's time well spent. And I really mean everyone, it is valuable to all employees to understand where the value is actually coming. Also it offers good ways to raise new business ideas within companies.

It's an excellent book and it will become part of everyday bookshelf. I will definitely reopen to check things from there in near future.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book review: What matters now by Gary Hamel

Gary Hamel is one of the most influential business thinkers nowadays. He has lot of things to tell in his latest book What matters now. It's a book about innovation, management innovation and how to make a world a better place. So it's a book about many thoughts, that come together in Gary's mind.

I finished the book about a week ago and I'm still bit puzzled, what it was all about. There was so many good things presented there and so many good examples around the world, that it takes time to digest it. Maybe the main message there is, that management practices in use are old and these don't help to get the full potential out of the people in companies.

Gary Hamel has found really interesting examples from very different kind of organizations all around the world to demonstrate how management and organizational behaviour can change. There are organizations from churches to small and huge companies in very different industries presented. The main similarity between examples is, that there has been in these organizations few people who have wanted to make a change in how their organization operate.

The book was really interesting and inspiring. It raised a lot of questions and gave some answers. It brought lot of seeds for ideas, but left also many questions to wonder. It was easy to read, but hard to digest.

I really like the way Gary Hamel writes. It's always interesting and easy to read, whatever the subject is. I recommend it for everyone interested in organizational improvement and new management practices. It's an important book which raises questions and thoughts. It's a pleasure to read.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Why there is so much Business Jargon?

I'm nowadays working in business to business environment. There, even more than b2c, everything is said with business jargon. It seems to be much better to say things with terms that doesn't really mean anything or are hard to understand. I keep on wondering , what is the point of that?

I define business jargon as explaining things more complicated than what they really are. For example email could be defined in business jargon as rich multi point communication platform enabling visual messaging between small or large groups. And camera would be a small carryable technical device, with possibilities on capturing thousand of moments to visual images anywhere in the world.

I hope you understand what I mean with business jargon with those examples It's hard to pick examples without embarrassing anyone, but the main point is that business jargon is saying easy things in really complex ways. If you want to check some examples there are many companies creating services or products in b2b sector that have some level of business jargon visible in their website.

I honestly don't understand it. Why couldn't things be said as those are. The same happens often in b2c business also. Take the mobile world as an example. Everybody is talking about, that there will LTE or 4G in this and that device. What they should say, there's going to be 10 times faster network speed on those devices. For normal people LTE doesn't mean anything.

Companies are often quite bad with communication. I believe one problem is the center of universe effect I blogged few weeks ago. They think that they need to tell every little detail on themselves, rather than focusing on getting the basic message through. Another thing is, that people in an industry get so familiar with their terminology they believe that everyone knows the terminology. That problem is part of business jargon effect. People are using terms that other people don't understand.

I've been doing lot of communication material in my new job at Product Manager at Contribyte. That's the reason communication issues have been in my mind lately. In few weeks we going to release some of the material to public. It will fun to hear and see how well I've managed to tackle the center of universe and business jargon effects. Maybe I have walked to the exact traps I'm saying everyone else does. Maybe that's too common to avoid. I at least know that those effects exists. Let's soon see what people think about those.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen