Märt Ridala's thoughts

Saving costs is something every organization needs to do now and then. Usually the focus is on training, travelling, personell, office costs and vendors. However, there are a few areas that usually are overlooked when cutting costs. As these are very important and big costs they definitely demand more attention from the managers. First - "Projects that get 90% done.... but are not launched" . A project that is almost launched is like an "almost goal" in football. The effort has been made - work done and money spent - but there is no use of it.  If you look around in your organization I am sure you can find numerous such things. For example: - Strategies that were worked out by a team and left then laying in the shelf - New products that were developed, but never introduced to the market - Process development that was designed, decided on, but not implemented In many cases the reasons for not doing the last bit are subjective. A person leaving or a change of mi...

I have written before about self-generating phenomenons in estonian , but it is an important topic that could be discussed more. Self-generating phenomenons are really important development paths in business, technology, society and environment. Detecting or creating one might easily you a millionare. First, what is a self-generating phenomenon . It is a process, technology or anything such that creates output that increase the process itself and that in turn increases the output. Let's look at some examples to explain:   Training and sports. The more people are into sports, the more sports shops there are in town. The sport shops want to increase their business, so they do advertising and sponsor sports events. The more advertising and events, the more people are into training and sports. The loop goes around until a logical maximum is reached and all the possible people who can be won over to sports are there.   Tourism . Apparently Stockholm is earning the most from to...

In Estonia the idea of "slim state" has long been a praised one. Relatively low taxes, minimal government and regulations are considered to be ideal. Until now this strategy has worked rather well .... in the sense of economical development. Estonian economy has been developing best among the post-Soviet republics.  I would like to make the point that in the 2012 world a neoliberal governance might not be the most successful one and looking on other models could prove useful. As I am residing in Sweden now I have an opportunity to observe the differences between the relatively neoliberal Estonian and the relatively social-democratic Swedish society. I also suggest that modern IT technology, social networking, datamining, mobility and other technical+sociological developments provide many new opportunities for governing a society better than ever.  Firstly I will define the problem .  If one pursues a slim neoliberal government then the ideal is the absolut minimum of...

I must apologize from jumping out of the topic of IT and IT services with this post, but maybe there is something to learn from it for everybody. Including IT people. The topic I want to write about is the real estate market and ... how bubbled up it is. Especially the Swedish one. To start up some facts, links and numbers: - You can see the average apartment square meter price of different parts of Sweden at www.maklarstatistik.se. For Stor-Stockholm the average price is currently 34 826 kr/m2 . That is approx. 3870 euros. The average means that it is something between 22 000 kr/m2 in the outer parts of Stockholm to 61 900 kr/m2 in Östermalm. - The average netto salary in Sweden was 27 900 kr/m in 2010 . It is a bit higher in Stockholm 31 700 kr/m . (But the SCB did not state if this is neto or bruto) - The price of real estate in Sweden before the financial crisis (january 2008) was on average 18% lower than today . So there was just a slight glitch in the prices and then they ...

In my last post I wrote how you can use different conferencing tools for multi-location collaboration. It is true that modern telecommunication tools have made it possible to work at home, to work with teams in different countries and different parts of the world. So the location of jobs should become less and less relevant. This should mean that the pressure to move to the nearest growth-city would weaken in time and we should see a trend of people moving to places where nature is closer and housing cheaper. But this is not happening! Why? We still see jobs and people moving to growth centers - to Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn, rather than Paide and Kärdla. One explanation for this is that telecommunications and IT enables not only working from distance, but also ruling from distance. You no longer need a local office or locally adjusted services. So paradoxically the better the communications get the more economical it gets to concentrate the jobs in the capital. Or what do you...

This list of hopefully practical and useful advice is based on my personal experience of running and participating in Nordic and Baltic projects. For five months now I have been working in Sweden and have been involved in projects involving Estonian, Finnish, Polish and Swedish team-members, people who are not only in different countries, but also in different cities, offices and cultures. By now I can state from my experience that it is possible to minimize travelling and run international projects with modern telecommunication tools. It is difficult, but possible. Here are a few subjective hints. I would greatly appreciate any advice and hints for myself and other "teleworkers" in the comments! The tools. One should use all the communication tools there are available. For example I use the following: - Telephone - E-mail - Skype (calls, videocalls, desktop sharing) - MS Live Communicator (calls, desktop sharing) - Cisco/Tandberg videomeeting - Telia Telemöte phone-...

The information in this post and the links were updated on 18th of July 2014. In my opinion Estonia is a good place for IT specialists to find a job and work in! Especially in the situation when the (youth) unemployment is rising and in many European countries there is no sign of it easing.  I promoted the idea to the Estonian IT companies in one of my recent posts . With this post I want to give my contribution to the exchange of talent inside EU. I hope this helps at least a few people.  This post is definitely not an official guide, but more of a friendly advice. If you have any questions regarding moving or any important information that could help others then please comment this post!  This post focuses on moving to Tallinn. Tartu, as the second biggest town in Estonia, is also an alternative with Playtech and Webmedia as the biggest IT sector employers there. The first thing you need is a job .  If you are an IT specialist with a university degree ther...