Märt Ridala's thoughts

This is another post where I explore the ideas and benefits around video- and teleconferencing.... We are soon starting a test in our team where we install "a Window to the office". The idea is to have a virtual video room where everybody in the team can connect with almost any device from anywhere and there will be a central computer showing video from the main office room all the time. This could potentially be a huge change on how we look at office work today. Our preliminary tests show that the technology is almost there. It needs some tuning and testing though and probably some components (like the Chrome Beta browsers Webrtc client on tablet) need some iterations to get stable, but we are almost there. This way we can make the teamwork in geographically split teams much better. Why one should do that? Here are the benefits that an employer could get from such an arrangement: 1. You no longer need to hire only from the same city your office ...

For a year now I have worked as a manager in a team called The Cloud Services Factory in the TeliaSonera group. We are a team of project managers and ICT specialists and our responsibility are innovation and product development projects on different TeliaSonera markets. Most of our team is in Tallinn, I work in Stockholm and the projects are aimed towards the Swedish, Finnish, Danish and other markets. This all creates a very interesting geographical challenge! How to manage for example a project that is aimed for the Nordic markets and that is managed by specialists from Estonia, Nordics and other countries? In this and a the next posts I would like to share some of the experience that we have in organizing our work to be geographically independent. I would like to push this even forward. I am quite sure that for ordinary office work the technology is almost there to end the need for being in the same physical location all together. This will create a sh...

The Economist put together recently a report on startups, incubators and how they are changing the world economy . Very good piece of reading! But there is one part in the startup scene that I don't quite understand.  As the report points out it is very common that founding a startup means very intensive work. Both the startups and accelerators acknowledge that it means months if not years of 12+ workdays, no family, no holidays, no relations outside the company not to mention any hobbies. I would hereby argue a it against it. I mean it is important to focus and get things done, but one should fit into the 40 hour workweek. Here are some questions to argue for that: - Do you make sound and good decisions if you have worked for 12+ hours seven days in a row or are you tired? - Do you get the best deal with the best partner if you are hurrying and do not take the time (sometimes months) for negotiations or do you take the one that you can close in two weeks? - If ...

This post is about the powers in an organization. It might sound a little  "Machiavellish", but I hope the innovators can take it as a practical guide on how to make things happen in an organization. One might also think that powers, diplomacy and politics are things that do not belong to innovative organizations, but it is not so. Politics and diplomacy are normal parts of any organization that consists of human beings. For example did you hold trading negotiations with your brother/sister about candy, cleaning, money etc? If even brothers/sisters negotiate and argue about who makes decisions then it is only natural that organizations consisting of hundreds of people have similar processes. It is the transparency and the objectiveness of decision making that is important. But now lets discuss the power that an Innovator needs to consider when trying to improve things. Firstly lets look at the formal and visible powers. There are three...

We are looking for a project manager in our product development team called The Cloud Services Factory. Here is the official announcement: http://ts.easycruit.com/intranet/elion/vacancy/1063875/66841?iso=ee   Let me know if you are interested!

In a few weeks there will be the annual  Innovation Summer Academy hosted by Tallinn Technical University. It will be a great event and if you have a chance then do participate! However, there are things that are almost never taught on such courses. Skills necessary for innovation and product development (especially in big corporations) that are never mentioned in neither innovation management books nor trainings. Hereby I would like to fill in that hole a little bit. Otherwise it so often happens that people come back to work after innovation trainings full of ideas and then just get smashed by the corporate world. So let's begin! Let's say you have an idea of a new product that your employer should launch and you want to make it happen. How should you proceed? Before you do anything take a moment and think it over - are you sure you want to do this? It will be hard, it might take years, it most probably will fail. If you do decide to go forward (and you should - we only...

In recent years an interesting discussion about artificial intelligences presence in our everyday life has started up. It is somewhat un-noticed that we have come to an era where artificial intelligence is starting to take over work, decisionmaking and even jobs that no-one could ever predicted. Here is an interesting TED talk from Ken Jennings who was the best jeopardy player and then was beaten by a super computer . I think this trend is very important, most probably it is un-avoidable and it is important for humankind to notice that. Let us think of a few examples. The most scary and almost un-noticed example is that of the high-frequency trading on stock markets. Read here more about it . In essence artificial intelligence owned by investment banks and capital funds are driving now over half of the trades on stock markets. So how did it happen that we now have a casino, where computers are playing with our pension money? It never was a conscious decision, it just happened. Does...