(FORTUNE Magazine) – Why should you want to run a funky business? Maybe because Jack Welch does, at least according to Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjell Nordstrom, authors of Funky Business (Financial Times Prentice Hall, $25), an irreverent take on how business is changing in the Internet era. During a recent talk with FORTUNE's Ann Harrington, the two Swedish business professors and consultants, who call their engagements "gigs," compared the best companies today with funk music. Like funk, they say, great companies are improvisational, with innovators everywhere, not just in R&D. They are driven by small, temporary teams of players that can be easily deployed. The funky firm, they say, is focused not just on what it can do better than anyone else but on core customers who share a common "vibe."

Why should business be funky?

RIDDERSTRALE: It has to do with the fact that Karl Marx was right: Workers today own the most critical resources of the company. You take a look at any major organization today and find 60%, 70%...sometimes 90% of the work that people do is done by way of our intellect. So the new critical means of production is the human brain. Smart people don't want to work at business-as-usual firms. They want to work at amazing companies, at surprising companies, at funky companies.

What brings an employee into an organization in the first place?

RIDDERSTRALE: The competitive company of today is becoming an organizational tribe in that you need a least common denominator, something that you can create attraction around. This least common denominator has something to do with values, with attitudes rather than skills. In the past we had a tendency to recruit people for skills and then train them for attitude. In the future we're going to see companies do the opposite.

What do you mean by attitudes?

NORDSTROM: I would rather call it values. A value is basically something that is not possible to negotiate. What is the right and wrong, good and bad; what kind of clients and projects you accept; how you relate to other people.

You quote Jack Welch quite a bit in your book. What's funky about him?

RIDDERSTRALE: What is funky about Jack Welch is that he has taken on the task of trying to rejuvenate a huge company [General Electric] when the current competitive landscape does not allow a company to be a large conglomerate. He has been very, very successful at splitting it up into a lot of small companies with a lot more agility than you would expect.

What's the funkiest business you know that you're not personally involved in?

NORDSTROM: I think Nokia is extremely funky. Nokia realized many years before anyone else that people would like to personalize their mobile phones. You want one in red, you want one that looks like a Zippo lighter maybe. You want one in blue. You could redesign it yourself. Most of the innovations that Nokia has brought to the industry are not technological. They are not organizational. Not managerial. To a large extent it's aesthetics and functionality.

But don't you still need to keep moving the technology forward?

RIDDERSTRALE: You do. But Ericsson will also do it. Motorola will also do it. Sony will do it. All the companies will do that. It is necessary to have the best technology, but it's not enough. Take the automotive industry. You've got to have great technology. You've got to have a great engine. You've got to have great safety. But on top of that, companies that are capable of building some art and some poetry into the product will succeed.