Crazy Town Oy is a privately funded entrepreneurship community in Finland, co-owned by Business Arena Oy and others, focusing on supporting small companies and entrepreneurs with shared office infrastructure and development tools. Established in 2003, it provides a platform for networking, marketing, and peer-to-peer learning, offering extensive training and forums for members. Crazy Town emphasizes a collaborative culture that fosters innovation and personal growth among entrepreneurs.

2. 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

3. 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

4. !
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)

5. 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

6. Very short history of business
development - our view
1970 - Business advisors
1990 - Business parks
2010 - Business communities
!
What is changing?

7. Brain industrial entrepreneurs
Enthusiasm, pathological optimism, passion
Peer-to-peer coaching
Dreaming
Shared values and visions
Culture instead of institution
Not doing alone

8. How Crazy Town creates
dialogue and learning
between entrepreneurs?

9. 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.”

10. 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
2 (externalization)
!
Finding patterns & leverage
points, tools and new ideas,
making lists of main findings
3 (combination)
!
Making plans and prototypes,
creating and finding new ideas
Source: Nonaka, Ikujiro & Takeuchi, Hirotaka. 1995.
The Knowledge-Creating Company.

11. What makes learning possible?
Creativity
Enriching community
Trust
Source: Pekka Himanen: Enriching community
Energy
Happiness
!
Recognition
Belonging
!
Feeling of safety

12. 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.

13. Dif f erent capitals, which create com petitive advantage = CT delivers t he latter three
for its members: human, social and positive psychological capital
Luthans et al. 2004
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).

14. 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

15. 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