Text Sushi by Alf Rehn

Today, in the newspaper, I read that the Finnish forestry industry has devised an “innovation company” called Metsäklusteri Oy (the Forest Cluster Inc). This is supposed to double the value of the Finnish forestry-industry’s production and service functions by the year 2030, and make Finland’s forestry famous and productive and profitable and blah, blah, blah. Let me point out why this kind of news bugs me.

a) The bloody name to begin with. You’re starting an innovation company, and you couldn’t come up with anything more enticing than “The Forest Cluster”? Obviously, the name itself needn’t mean much (and I’m getting really annoyed at the current trend of babyfied names like Jaiku and Joomla and Gooh and so on), but a name as boring as this smacks of intense bureaucracy and decision-making by committee. Why not just call it “HeadInSand” and be frank about it?

b) Jesus Christ, they don’t even turn up on Google. They’re called Metsäklusteri, but turn up neither at www.metsaklusteri.com nor at www.metsaklusteri.fi – hooray for innovation strategy…

c) An innovation company that assumes that it’s business will be more or less the same in 25 years, am I the only one a little concerned? Obviously forestry will be important in 25 years, and I despise the snake-oil salesmen who pretend otherwise, but things can change a wee bit in 25 years. The assumption this company makes, that it can actually have a 25 year plan, is charming in a sense, but I doubt they’re thinking the way I am about this. Were this a anti-establishment move, a brave anti-position to overly cheerful innovation thinking, I’d like it. It could have a bit of punk, a bit of old-school Maoism about it, and I like that attitude. But I doubt this is how they’ve thought. This is innovation by keeping things the same, creativity by committee and tight reigns. Not good.

d) Oh, and everyone’s invites to the party. All the companies, all the government agencies, a bunch of universities – all part of the monolith. Yeah, throw in everyone’s entrenched opinions, make it a political muddle to begin with, and make sure that everything will by necessity be log-jammed by competing interests, that is just a perfect way to start up innovation in an industry.

I wonder, like Chandler from Friends, could they be any more clueless?