Partners

Willi Schroll

Willi is an expert in foresight and innovation management with a focus on emerging technologies. His professional activity in strategic trend research started in 1995 and is connected with leading agencies in German foresight like Z_punkt (Cologne). It also resulted in public trend and future reports (e.g. Web 2.0 Report, TV 2020). Rich with interesting future topics Willi is a keynote speaker and he is listed on the speaker directory “Deutsches Rednerlexikon”.

As a skilled workshop moderator he is acquainted with methods like Design Thinking, Art of Hosting and World Café – ways to innovate and to create real change in the mindset of a group. One special passion of Willi is to create real and virtual spaces to enable serendipity and transformation (e.g. Living Bridges Community). Willi is living in Berlin and is fluent in English and German.

Jari Kaivo-oja

Dr. Jari Kaivo-oja has many years expertise in the field of foresight and innovation at Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC), at Turku School of Economics (TSE), at the University of Turku. He is adjunct professor at the University of Helsinki and at the University of Lapland in foresight and innovation management domains. Dr Kaivo-oja has worked in FP6, FP7 and in Horizon 2020 for European Commission´s programmes planning and implementing various foresight and ambient research projects. He has lectured about corporate and SME foresight issues in many seminars and conferences. He has lectured and keynoted in European Science Foundation (ESF, London), Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS, Moscow), in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS, Beijing) and on many prestigious business and science events. He has worked for Nordic Innovation Centre (NIC), RAND Europe, European Foundation, Eurostat and European Parliament.

His current research and consulting activities are focused on technology entrepreneurship and innovation management, patent and trademark research, Quartet Helix and VUCA approaches. He is especially focused on open innovation management, service designs and architectures, service innovation inventions and participatory foresight processes. He has broad competences about foresight methods, business research, high profile R&D research, sparring growth companies, start-ups and organizing foresight workshops with creativity tools and idea generation, invention and innovation methods.

His professional passion is to develop, rebuild and commercialise new business model innovations, technological innovations and social innovations. He prefers bright future-oriented ideas and sustainable business models.

Lauri Kuukasjärvi

Lauri has a long experience in the fields of science park management and regional development. His expertise covers a wide scope of activities, like creation, implementation and management of regional development programmes and evaluation of the ongoing programmes. Lauri is a seasoned expert for Finnish Competence Center program – OSKE, which has gained reputation of its effectiveness and impact also on global level.

Lauri has worked managing regional development programmes  in Finland, Russia, South-Africa, Mosambique, Tanzania and Vietnam. Lauri ia also a respected speaker, and has given speechees on regional development and innovation promotion in all above mentioned countries and in addition in China, Indonesia and many countries in Europe. Lauri is living in Lahti and is fluent in Finnish, English and Swedish.

Evert  Jonsson

Evert has a wide working experience having worked in management positions for big multinational companies like ABB Carbon and Volvo Aero Support and public innovation intermediary Teknikbyn Västerås, as well as run his own businesses in Evert Jonsson Tech Sales AB. He  is working well in international business field and is member of valuable business networks.

Evert is one of the pioneers in Swedish science park business, started Västerås Teknikbyn from scratch 1998 and when resigning from the CEO post 2006 the science park had more than 200 companies as customers. Evert has collaborated with Karostech management team earlier on also in Iqlink’s technology transfer business and is a minor shareholder in Karostech. Evert is living in Västerås and is fluent in Swedish, English and German.

Alexander Paschenko

Resident of Moscow, Alex has a long experience in socio-economic and innovation development projects in Russia. His team has been responsible for the implementation of various strategy level action plans for regional development authorities in different regions of Russia including Moscow, Troitsk, Dubna, Khabarovsk, etc. In most of those projects special emphasis has been put on conceptual planning of the technology parks.

Alex has a research background from the Institute of Control Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is author of 60+ scientific publications and holds PhD in mathematical modeling. Alex is fluent in Russian and English.

Erik Soonieus

Erik Soonieus has been working for the last 10 years on social and technological innovation in order to optimize organizations. Competence platforms and self organized teamwork are his area of expertise. He co-founded Part-up, a new challenger in the competence platform domain. Part-up is the marketplace for teamwork, where individuals have the opportunity to start and join projects they care about, realizing the purpose of the organization.

Erik is a skilled facilitator and visionary on the next generation of work. He helps in transforming both national government agencies, large financial institutions and healthcare institutions from traditional hierarchical organizations to modern and flexible networks of professionals. Erik lives in Den Haag, Netherlands and is fluent in English and Dutch.

Kari Mikkelä

Kari is co-founder of Urban Mill, which is privately run public-private co-working and co-creation platform for urban innovations co-initiated by City of Espoo and Aalto University and situated at Aalto University campus. He has 25 years academic, corporate and NGO experience of learning, innovation and business services. During his career he has worked in and for several organisations in a variety of capacities specialized to innovation orchestration, user-driven RDI and digitally enabled services co-creation. He has overseen well over 200 successful initiatives. Among other things he has orchestrated 15 years digital learning services and solutions development in European University-Enterprise collaboration context. At the moment Kari acts as an Executive Producer of the Urban Mill – an Urban Innovation Co-working and Co-creation Platform in Espoo Innovation Garden.

Kari received his M.Sc. Degree from Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and studies as a candidate for his PhD at Aalto University (DIEM – Department of Industrial Engineering and Management). Theme of his PhD work is “Orchestration of Digitally enabled Service Business Development”. He worked at TUT, Finnish Engineers Association (TEK ry) and Helsinki University of Technology before he joined Järvelin Design Oy in 1998 where he presently works as an Executive Producer and an Innovation Architect in charge of the Urban Mill businesses. Kari has worked 18 years as an in-sourced external advisor, coach and executive producer providing expertise and facilitation in areas of learning technologies, innovation orchestration, digitally enabled service business creation, RDI ecosystems and open innovation platforms for several companies and public organisations including Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics, University of Helsinki, Aalto University Properties Ltd, Culminatum Ltd – the Centre of Expertise for Digital Learning Services, Sitra – The Finnish Innovation Fund, Prime Minister’s Office of Finland and the European Commission.

Bert-Ola Bergstrand

Bert-Ola Bergstrand has a long experience in the field of social capital, Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investment. His main expertise is how to build communities and learning environments online and in various locations.  Bert-Ola has been involved in many pilot projects in Sweden and abroad related to Social Capital.

In addition, he has evaluated the first regional program for social entrepreneurship in Sweden, been part in developing a framework for innovation around the Biosphere (Biosphere Innovation system) and also is part in developing an action and learning platform ecosystem called Living Bridges Planet. Further he had been content producer of large conferences like SoCap Designing the Future (2012) and Sweden Conference 2009 on Urban Policies and Social Capital and given several keynote presentations in the field of social change. Bert-Ola is living in Gothenburg and is fluent in Swedish and English.

Kari Mikkelä

Kari is co-founder of Urban Mill, which is privately run public-private co-working and co-creation platform for urban innovations co-initiated by City of Espoo and Aalto University and situated at Aalto University campus. He has 25 years academic, corporate and NGO experience of learning, innovation and business services. During his career he has worked in and for several organisations in a variety of capacities specialized to innovation orchestration, user-driven RDI and digitally enabled services co-creation. He has overseen well over 200 successful initiatives. Among other things he has orchestrated 15 years digital learning services and solutions development in European University-Enterprise collaboration context. At the moment Kari acts as an Executive Producer of the Urban Mill – an Urban Innovation Co-working and Co-creation Platform in Espoo Innovation Garden.

Kari received his M.Sc. Degree from Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and studies as a candidate for his PhD at Aalto University (DIEM – Department of Industrial Engineering and Management). Theme of his PhD work is “Orchestration of Digitally enabled Service Business Development”. He worked at TUT, Finnish Engineers Association (TEK ry) and Helsinki University of Technology before he joined Järvelin Design Oy in 1998 where he presently works as an Executive Producer and an Innovation Architect in charge of the Urban Mill businesses. Kari has worked 18 years as an in-sourced external advisor, coach and executive producer providing expertise and facilitation in areas of learning technologies, innovation orchestration, digitally enabled service business creation, RDI ecosystems and open innovation platforms for several companies and public organisations including Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki School of Economics, University of Helsinki, Aalto University Properties Ltd, Culminatum Ltd – the Centre of Expertise for Digital Learning Services, Sitra – The Finnish Innovation Fund, Prime Minister’s Office of Finland and the European Commission.

Anabel Quan-Haase

Anabel Quan-Haase is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies and the Department of Sociology, the University of Western Ontario. Currently, she is the director of the SocioDigital Lab at Western. Dr. Quan-Haase holds a MSc. in Psychology from Humboldt University, Berlin and a Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University of Toronto. Her current interests also lie in how electronic resources are changing the nature of scholarship, innovation, and creativity. She currently holds a SSHRC Insight Grant to study serendipity and digital environments in the humanities and a SSHRC Insight Development Grant to study digital divides in the senior population.  She is the author of over 50 articles, proceedings, and book chapters. Her articles have been published in American Behavioral Scientist, The Information Society, Information, Communication, & Society, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Dr. Quan-Haase is the author of two books Technology and Society (2015, 2nd ed. with Oxford University Press) and Information Brokering in the High-Tech Industry (2009 with Lambert) and co-author of the Handbook of Social Media Research Methods (Sage, in print).

Bert-Ola Bergstrand

Bert-Ola Bergstrand has a long experience in the field of social capital, Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investment. His main expertise is how to build communities and learning environments online and in various locations.

Bert-Ola has been involved in many pilot projects in Sweden and abroad related to Social Capital. In addition, he has evaluated the first regional program for social entrepreneurship in Sweden, been part in developing a framework for innovation around the Biosphere (Biosphere Innovation system) and also is part in developing an action and learning platform ecosystem called Living Bridges Planet. Further he had been content producer of large conferences like SoCap Designing the Future (2012) and Sweden Conference 2009 on Urban Policies and Social Capital and given several keynote presentations in the field of social change. Bert-Ola is living in Gothenburg and is fluent in Swedish and English.

Willi Schroll

Willi is an expert in foresight and innovation management with a focus on emerging technologies. His professional activity in strategic trend research started in 1995 and is connected with leading agencies in German foresight like Z_punkt (Cologne). It also resulted in public trend and future reports (e.g. Web 2.0 Report, TV 2020). Rich with interesting future topics Willi is a keynote speaker and he is listed on the speaker directory “Deutsches Rednerlexikon”.

As a skilled workshop moderator he is acquainted with methods like Design Thinking, Art of Hosting and World Café – ways to innovate and to create real change in the mindset of a group. One special passion of Willi is to create real and virtual spaces to enable serendipity and transformation (e.g. Living Bridges Community). Willi is living in Berlin and is fluent in English and German.