When the short message service (SMS), was first initiated in 1992 nobody could foresee its tremendous popularity. Simple in design, easy to adapt and effortless to employ it rapidly became a profitable, matchless, globally used mobile service – one, which changed the lives of European teenagers. Ever since the quest for the next mobile service “killer application” has continued. Year after year the mobile service markets produce new services and applications that due to complexity or lack of relevance fail to meet the consumers' expectations. Nevertheless, the future growth of mobile telephony revenues is expected to rely on mobile services. The use of mobile services is expected (or hoped) to be a significant part of the revenues to be generated by 3G mobile networks. This may yet be true but the adoption of new mobile services has been much slower than expected, especially in Europe. Several reasons have been suggested for the slow adoption rate, ranging from cultural to business models. In this paper we are focusing on the Finnish market, where there are several reasons to suggest that a rapid adoption could take place, including a relatively long history of mobile services, low costs, positive attitudes to the use of high technology and rather a good supply of mobile services. We will discuss three mobile services that commonly have been described as promising and innovative: mobile games, mobile television and snapshots with mobile phones, in an attempt to understand their potential for becoming successful services. If we for a moment forget the quest for “the mobile killer applications” – the dream of quickly making lots of money with a new technology – there is no way to deny that the mobile technology has had and continues to have a profound impact on our everyday routines. Things become easier to manage, time-consuming routines a bit faster to handle and there are a number of things we are able to accomplish which have not been possible before – or which we have not even thought to be possible.

Professor Milan Zeleny first visited us in 1978 when he was working on building breakthrough theories for multiple criteria decision making, which had a significant impact on management science research in Finland for the next 1–2 decades. Then he started Human Systems Management, a journal devoted to the integration of knowledge, management and systems which is different from many other research journals as it blazes the trail for innovative thought, less tested theories and models, and serves as a platform for a critical re-examination of established truths and results which are not questioned anymore. We have had the opportunity over the years to test our new insights and first systems constructs in Human Systems Management and we have been encouraged to continue work on improved and better constructs through the constructive criticism we got, which is one of the trademarks of Human Systems Management.

Professor Milan Zeleny is not unlike his journal – he has always been at the forefront of new ideas, new theories, new systems constructs in management science (and a number of other areas of research). He is critical, he is questioning your premises and he is arguing with you about your conclusions, but he is very knowledgeable and he is generous with his ideas and his advice. He is always challenging his friends and collaborators to take one more step and find insight which is there, but not yet seen – until you have had one of the discussion sessions with Milan.

We salute a visionary researcher and a great scientist on his birthday and we wish for many more birthdays to come!