Crazy Town Oy - privately funded

entrepreneurship community - owned by two companies

(Business Arena and Villinikkarit) and few individuals

Business Arena Oy - private company specializing in helping

universities and regional developers - co-owner and founder of Crazy Town Oy

- owned by its staff - can help to localize Crazy Town concept

for your environment as part of its service portfolio

What is Crazy Town?

1. Business and innovation community for small KIBS companies and entrepreneurs (not just start-ups) !2. The oldest still-functioning entrepreneur community in Finland, fully privately funded and operated, one of the first co-working spaces !3. It’s for entrepreneurs who want to: ... use the network as one of their main marketing tool ... develop their business together with other entrepreneurs ... get good working environment in reasonable price ... get energy from other people

!

1) Shared office infrastructure 2) Tools for business & competence development - personality, business models !!3) Combined marketing efforts & business !

4) Working community !!

Crazy Town membership includes: (included in the monthly membership fee, starting at around 300 EUR / person)

Milestones in Crazy history

1.1.2003, first Crazy Town in Jyväskylä: “We wanted to create the best place for ourselves to work at and to develop our business.” !28.11.2003, Crazy Town Oy founded !around 2005: Crazy Town concept used as basis for the global HUB network !2007, first experiments on spreading the model: “You are not so alone, even though you are alone.” !Until now: Almost 300 people from over 80 companies have been part of the Crazy Town community

Very short history of business development - our view

1970 - Business advisors 1990 - Business parks 2010 - Business communities !

What is changing?

Culture instead of institution

Peer-to-peer coachingEnthusiasm, pathological optimism, passion

Shared values and visions

Brain industrial entrepreneurs

Dreaming

Not doing alone

How Crazy Town creates dialogue and learning between entrepreneurs?

Personal idea ”How to develop my skills as an

entrepreneur?”

Business idea ”What can I learn from other people’s

examples?”

Community idea ”Using community as my source of

innovations and marketing resource, combining resources and skills.”

Learning together and peer support

1 (socialization) !

Talking, “throwing ideas”, “talking during breaks”, formal dialogue sessions

4 (internalization) !

Action - Testing ideas in practice, using

plans to generate action

3 (combination) !

Making plans and prototypes, creating and finding new ideas

2 (externalization) !

Finding patterns & leverage points, tools and new ideas, making lists of main findings

Source: Nonaka, Ikujiro & Takeuchi, Hirotaka. 1995. The Knowledge-Creating Company.

What makes learning possible?

Source: Pekka Himanen: Enriching community

Creativity

Enriching community

Trust

Energy Happiness

!Recognition Belonging

!Feeling of safety

Crazy Town tools for business & competence development

• CT Town Meeting: 3 times / year (36 h intensive training & workshop * 3 = 108 h)

• CT coffeebreak: once a week, 1 hour (40 h) • Other open forums: (20h) • Development discussion: 12 h / year. != members get 180 h/year = 22,5 days/year of facilitated learning forums + unofficial peer-support and ideas on daily basis (most important thing!) !

• Working and learning together: project teams may include people from 2-5 companies - best way to learn is to do projects together!

• Virtual discussion forums for CT members • Theme weeks, for example “Sales Weeks”, a 4-week

period when everyone reports to others about their sales, competing against each other and themselves. Sales leads are shared, companies create joint offerings.

• Personal business development. Members attend to courses, conferences and/or other development activities. Community engourages to share new ideas and insights to others.

Luthans et al. 2004

Different capitals, which create competitive advantage = CT delivers the latter three

for its members: human, social and positive psychological capital

location to do business exchange. Most of the incubators and organizations that promote

Entrepreneurship provide a space for small and medium sized companies to begin operations. Most

of these firms do not have plenty of Financial Capital when they begin. Therefore the support of

these types of institutions helps them to avoid the problems of paying a high rent or buying an

office.

2.2.4 Psychological Capital

Psychological Capital has been mentioned and researched in various works on economics,

investment and sociology. (Luthans, Luthans & Luthans 2004, 47). On their research Luthans et al.

have focused on the positive sides of Psychological Capital. Basically it means that the positive

Psychological Capital focuses on the strengths rather than the weaknesses. It tries to bring out the

positive attitude towards thinking and doing. When it comes to Entrepreneurship, the positive

attitude refers, to the capabilities to achieve the goals set for the startup. Below, the figure shows a

short presentation of different capitals which have an influence on the competitive advantage. The

Psychological Capital gives answer to the question “who am I?”

FIGURE 4 Expanding capital for competitive advantage (Luthans et al. 2004, 46).

What can Crazy Town offer to you? !• a tested low-cost, self-managing environment for small KIBS

companies and entrepreneurs with strong focus on peer-learning !

• a Crazy Town community can be operated as an individual entity, or as a complimentary element of a business incubator/accelerator or a science park !

• Business Arena Oy can localize the concept and tools for your needs through workshops and study visits

For more information on how Business Arena Oy can help you to localize Crazy Town concept, please contact

Mikko Markkanen +358 40 758 8712

mikko.markkanen@businessarena.fi

www.businessarena.fi