Pekka Koponen
Chair, Professio Group, Professor of Practice, University of Vaasa
Pekka Koponen is Chair of Professio Group and also a Chair of Infinit Capital, a family office investing in companies building better future, with special focus in renewing education sector. Infinit Capital is a major shareholder in Spinverse, a platform for his passion to drive the growth of new business by innovation and to bring new technologies to market. Founded in 2004, Spinverse is the Nordic leader in innovation consulting, specialised in building and leading open innovation ecosystems and arranging public funding for them. Under Pekka’s leadership, Spinverse helped the network of its international customers raise over 1,5 billion € of EU funding and coordinated over 2 B€ worth of projects. Pekka’s extensive network covers the highest-ranking European innovation leaders from large corporations, most innovative SMEs, research institutes, universities and governmental organizations both in European Commission and member states.
Pekka’s experience in lobbying covers driving regulation and budget for innovation both in Finland and at EU-level. As Chairman of Innovation&Competitiveness Working Group of Technology industries of Finland, he successfully facilitated an agenda for increasing public funding for industry-driven innovation ecosystems leading into a historic law to guarantee growing government funding. As a Co-founder and President of European Association of Innovation Consultants, he lead building the leading Europe-wide association for innovation funding consultants.
Before founding Spinverse, Pekka had exciting 14 years at Nokia during its growth phase. He joined Nokia as a smart card expert for the company’s first GSM phone and wrote software that shipped in 500 million pockets. His later achievements included cellular network market entries in a number of emerging countries, facilitating Nokia’s ecosystem strategy and developing corporate venturing operations. His extensive international career includes expatriate assignments in China, Singapore, UK and Czech Republic.
Pekka holds an MBA from IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Oulu. His marriage with Laura includes an extended family of five children, all board members in Infinit Capital. Former endurance-sports enthusiast, a finisher of a dozen marathons, triathlons and long-distance races in cycling and cross-country skiing now relaxes by snowboarding, playing golf and catamaran sailing.