FINNished reading that article…?

The print media dominates the mass media economy in Finland and newspaper circulation per capita is the highest in the EU and third highest in the world.

Finland has about 200 newspapers, more than a quarter published 4 to 7 times a week. The total circulation of all newspapers exceeds 3 million and most are bought by subscription rather than from newsstands. Finland also has a very high number of magazines; there are about 2.800 weeklies, and adding titles published at least four times per year, the figure reaches 3.500.

By the way, Finland, with an average of 563 score points, was the highest-performing country on the PISA 2006 science scale. More on PISA 2006 and results

If you’re interested get more on media in this Scandinavian country, read this comprehensive article on Finland’s media

Envy versus jealousy

Envy

Envy is a part-object function, it is not based on love. Some people consider envy to be the most primitive and fundamental emotion. It is a part-object process that is not based on love, it exhausts external objects, and is destructive in nature. Envy is destructive, possessive, controlling, and does not allow outside intruders in.

Jealousy

Jealousy, unlike envy, is a whole object relationship whereby one desires the object, but does not seek to destroy it or the Oedipal rival (father and siblings, those who take mother away. Jealousy, unlike envy, is based on love, wherein one desires to be part of the group, family, clan, nation… and be included in the group, the clan, the family. Jealousy has an Oedipal component, is based on love, and is a higher form of development than envy. It is a triangular relationship, in which one seeks the possession of the loved object and the removal of the rival.

These are definitions from PhD Joan Lachkar

Don’t even ask me why I was thinking about this, I think it’s because sometimes the possesive nouns overtake the rational thought I like to defend. 2008 resolution: waiving goodbye emotional approaches to business ;-)

In the photo Princess Elf who cannot be happy with all her riches courtesy of Maddie Harder

Fostering Creative Thought Inc.

I recently read an interesting post about where innovation occurs in organisations. I have to say the post by Bo Harald is fascinating in that it addresses the critical issue of the formal lines of authority versus the informal communication lines.

I have nothing against formal communication and organisational charts, but I also believe there proliferation of distributed tools and myriad operation models should prompt large organisations even more to revise traditional communication lines.

Harald mentions in his post the discovery by social cartography pioneer Valdis Krebs that innovation happens in intersections of the organisation. The kind where ideas meet that are not visible in the formal organisation charts. This means people there are excellent individuals (the best positioned) to revise how things are done or could be done and drive innovation.

Interestingly enough, he supports that the messiness of the social interaction patterns of an organisation is often correlated to the innovation capacity it exercises.

Just to ratify the probability of the assertion, I read a very interesting study about using social graphs to uncloak terrorist networks by Krebs which also raised my interest on the issue. In any case, it’s application to the social graph of my current organisation is, for the moment, what most interests me. Now trying to think how to apply, adapt, learn… ;-)

In the image the social graph of the 2001 September 11th folks from Valdis Krebs study

Market share is… never enough?

 

I was just looking over our competitive monthly report in a number of markets and giving faces and situations to diverse points in the monthly outlook of 2007. After a lot of musing about what really matters in business development you always somehow reach the conclusion that what matters is market share. We spend so much time speaking of it, looking for it, defining metrics to measure it, increase it, benchmark it… But let’s see what it really is.

It’s the percentage of the total sales of given type of product or service attributable to a given company, they say.

This means that your market share = Your company sales of Product X / Total market sales of Product X

Clear. Now, what cool stuff can make us move towards more market share? And I do not mean just predatory pricing, for those incumbents reading (if any)!

As far as I know market share is associated with profitability and normally we seek to increase it to achieve economies of scale and bargaining power, sales growth (especially in stagnant industries), to improve reputation…

Tools to increase it? I have recently seen a checklist where they mention the following as key actions:

1. Share of preference: product pricing, promotions
2. Share of voice: advertising and promotional share
3. Share of distribution: improved and increased channels

But I am missing something here… In a market of web applications, where does product quality stand in terms of driving organic share growth?

In the image a graph of free versus paid newspaper market-shares in Europe from Newspaperinnovation.com. Look at Iceland!!! Looks like the age of copy sales has passed already…

Inside the dotted line

The other day I attended a presentation where a P&G Marketing & Sales veteran explained what she considers to be matrix management. She informed us of the following

Matrix management is a type of organizational management in which people with similar skills are pooled for work assignments. It is a style of management where an individual has two reporting superiors – one functional and one operational.

I like this definition, although of course I find it a hard execution challenge, but could be a good one if it works.

 

Among the virtues of this model, she described the following:

1. Better solutions to consumer/client needs
2. Better reconciliation of technology requirements
3. Brings together diverse mix of talent and skills
4. Better integration of functional groups
5. More effective functional communication
6. More efficient use of corporate resources
7. Better strategy deployment across the whole company
8. Allows economies of scale within functional departments
9. Enables in-depth knowledge and skill development
10. Enables the organization to accomplish functional and strategic goals

It seems to address many of the issues that are keeping me awake. It’s also specially challenging in our environment, meaning:

We deal in emerging markets of sometimes irregular legal, structural and business frameworks

We work with networked people collaborating in a second (sometimes not optimal) language. Culture matters and has an impact, it requires another individual learning step in the fluency of the matrix collaboration

Not all markets and countries operate at the same level of maturity, skill, transparency. You need to understand each one very distinctly or best practise sharing could become a worse practise in itself ;-)

Ukrainians in the planet

Ukrainians are one of the largest European ethnic groups with a population of more than 44 million people worldwide.

Most ethnic Ukrainians, about 37 million in total, live in Ukraine where they make up over three-quarters of the population. The largest Ukrainian community outside of Ukraine is in Russia, about 3 million Russian citizens consider themselves ethnic Ukrainians, while millions of others (primarily in southern Russia and Siberia) have some Ukrainian ancestry. There are also almost 2 million Ukrainians in North America (1,000,000 in Canada and 890,000 in the United States).

Large numbers of Ukrainians live in Brazil (950,000 – 1,000,000), Kazakhstan (about 500,000), Moldova (450,000), Poland (300,000), Belarus (250, 000), Argentina (305,000), and Slovakia (55,000). There are also Ukrainian diasporas in Germany, Portugal (65,000), UK, Romania, Latvia and former Yugoslavia.

Thanks Wikipedia, greetings from Kiev!

In the photo Ukrainian soccer player Andriy Shevchenko, who started his career in the Dynamo Kiev.