The power of small

The Gamer plays the mobile app Clash of Clans almost religiously. Chances are, if you have a teenage boy you know what Clash of Clans is. But did you know it’s a Nordic export?

Currently headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, Supercell is every teenage boy’s dream job. And who wouldn’t want to be developing video games such as Hay Day, Clash of Clans and Boom Beach in a small-group based, highly creative, high quality environment? Even the Supercell commercials are high energy, displaying a quality of design and craftsmanship that is seldom seen in this space. To view some of their best commercials, click here.

The name Supercell refers to the company’s unique internal structure; small cells that work independently but come together to create the larger organism, or company, in this case. They pride themselves on harnessing the power of small through their focus on quality at every level. Each member of a cell is an all-star, there are no slackers or celebrities. They are seen as equal in talent and equal in contribution. The CEO, Ilkka Paananen, described it in this interview as being similar to a sports team, which needs to have powerful players in every position in order to win. “We believed the game developers, not the leaders, should be the superstars,” he said.

As part of this vision, Supercell’s developers have a large amount of control over what happens with their project. Although there are some basic requirements, the developers’ input factors into almost every decision of the development cycle.

The founders had some lofty goals. One of them was to create “games people will play for years.” To do this, they focused on a quality game play experience and added a social aspect to make it more fun. It turns out this social design is just as big a draw as the strategy and game play.

Supercell is in good company. Finland claims to be the mobile gaming capital of the world. And with good reason. According to Invest in Finland  the Finnish gaming industry is the fastest growing gaming industry in the world, with an average growth rate of almost 50% in the decade between 2004-2015. The industry currently employs over 2,700 individuals and still anticipates growth. A full 30 out of the 250 active studios make over €1 Million per year. You can read the full Industry Report here.

But they don’t all start at the top. Even Supercell had its decision point. In the middle of development on their first big project, the research came back saying it wasn’t a good investment. The company turned on a dime and focused on a more strategically viable product. CEO Ilkka Paananen cited sisu as an important factor in making that pivotal decision.

As one would expect when sisu is involved, the people at Supercell weren’t afraid to do something difficult. They chose to pivot to a new option as soon as they realized the product wasn’t viable. It was this quick pivot that enabled the company to use their resources to create a more viable product. In this case, the exact same team that had worked on the scrapped project were the ones to create Clash of Clans, their most successful product to this day.

It’s important to embrace those tough decisions. To face them head on and find the right solution. To find the sisu, the grit, to see it through to resolution. And who knows, maybe it will turn out better than you think.

What did I learn from this?

Don’t be afraid to fail. But fail fast. You’ll set yourself up for greater success going forward.