AIKAGROUP - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Director
• Consultant With an ICT

Mr Ari Kalmari has over 14 years of experience building regional innovation systems in the academic and technology centre sector in close cooperation with local businesses and industries. 2004 he was invited to Lahti Science and Business Park Ltd, a leading environmental technology centre in Finland but also responsible for innovation- and hi-tech-oriented growth programmes and related services for all the industrial clusters in the Lahti region. Mr Kalmari has been in charge of the development activities of the most significant cluster, mechatronics/ICT, and he is also a cluster board member. Currently, he is responsible for innovation and development activities for the wellbeing cluster as a director of the national Regional Centre Programme in the Lahti Region. Lahti is one of the leading Finnish regions in developing the public-private partnership and private well-being business. Mr Kalmari also is an official representative of the Finnish State Technical Research Center VTT in Lahti. During his academic career (1993 - 2004), Mr Kalmari was responsible for building and starting the ICT engineering line at Lahti University of Applied Sciences. He was also managing the educational and administrative functions of the line, which finally formed half of the volume of the faculty of technology. Mr Kalmari himself specialized in telecommunication, data network technologies and electronics. In 2001 he founded and managed a new R&D unit, Lahti IT Centre, together with the Helsinki University of Technology, Lahti University of Applied Sciences, the city of Lahti and local companies. IT Centre's mission was to boost R&D work in the companies and develop their competitiveness, especially by promoting the utilization of ICT. IT Centre activities were moved to Lahti Science and Business Park at the beginning of 2004. During 1985 - 1993 Mr Kalmari worked for Lahti Precision, an international provider of machine controls. He was in charge of programming and automation and was responsible for several plant start-ups in Russia, Estonia, the Nordic countries, an the UK. He also was responsible for one significant business development project, which consisted of designing the first after-sales products and starting the after-sales business which he also managed. Mr Kalmari is an experienced consultant with an ICT background both from industry and academia. Understanding the technology and possibilities it brings, he is specialising in fostering innovation, new business and competitiveness through technology based solutions.

Job Titles:

• Senior Consultant
• Management and Innovation Specialist

Mr Cecil Haverkamp is a management and innovation specialist with a public policy and international development background. He has worked at global and country levels with governments, international organisations and leading universities in the US, South-East Asia and southern Africa. In his work, Cecil is particularly interested in the power of professional networks and communities of practice as drivers for innovation and change from within organisations where conventional top-down or outside approaches have failed or proven short-lived. At Aika, he is developing innovation coaching and partnership models tailored to the region's organisational and contextual circumstances to ensure a broader and more sustainable impact, especially on protracted problems in complex and dynamic systems independent of sectors or technical fields. These include economic transformation and diversification challenges, resource dependencies and labour migration. Cecil co-founded several initiatives and platforms based on these ideas and constantly experiments with new tools and approaches. Mr Haverkamp's core expertise lies in public sector innovation, specifically in managing and mobilizing processes for reform projects and their effective implementation at the interface of public, non-profit and business sectors. He has worked with governments in high, middle and low income countries, international organizations and universities in the US, Asia and southern Africa.

Job Titles:

• Senior Consultant

Mr Brealey has 15 years experience in marketing and SME development in the UK and in Developing Economies. Core areas of focus are; Organisational Development, Change Management, Strategic and Marketing Planning. Mr Brealey has a BA from the University of Bristol and an Executive MBA from The Cranfield School of Management.

Job Titles:

• Director, Energy & Environment

Peter has extensive experience in energy and environment planning implementation and delivery projects in industrial applications and energy-saving projects in real estate and housing. He is a specialist in industrial moisture removal and drying applications as well.

Job Titles:

• CEO

Kettula has worked with the corporate and business development issues of Ahlstrom and Andritz Corporations in Sweden and Austria. He also served in the diplomatic corps as an Attaché, Industry and Technology from 1992-1995 in Tokyo, Japan, developing scientific and industrial cooperation on the university, public sector and corporate levels. He was responsible for industrial project development in forestry, manufacturing, chemical and environmental industries. He consulted with Finnish and Japanese companies on this assignment for cooperation projects. He developed an integrated approach for the largest-ever Finnish - Japan environmental project of volatile organic gas management in Japanese and Finnish pulp mills for the Federation of Finnish Forest Industries. He has acted as a Vice President in an industrial environment responsible for industry services consisting of surface coating and thin sheet fabrication. Projects conducted consisted of several factory development projects in Finland and abroad. One of the delivered projects was the most significant Finnish industrial investment to Estonia, supporting the EU Tacis program. In 2001, Mr Kettula was invited to Radiolinja-Elisa, a major Finnish telecommunications operator, as development manager of new businesses. The projects involved cooperation with Asian and Japanese telecommunication partners and financial planning of significant infrastructure investments related to 3G/UMTS networks, digital-TV, and national number portability programs led by Finnish national telecom regulator Ficora. He has over seven years of experience in building national and regional innovation systems and developing programs to implement those strategies from the company Technopolis, the largest technology centre in Europe, measured by the number of companies. These programs include starting the Vantaa High Technology Program and The International Centre development programs. He has consulted several international science and technology park cases in Scandinavia, Southern Europe, South-East Asia, Africa and Brazil. He has consulted United Nations Development projects in Senegal and Ghana on Science and Technology Park issues. He currently manages the Innovation Centre implementation phase at Gaborone, Botswana. Mr Kettula has working experience in Sweden, Norway, Austria, the USA, Japan, Vietnam, Brasilia, South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. He is an M. Sc. (Mec. Eng.) from the Helsinki University of Technology and an MBA from the University of Wales, analyzing the Success Factors of Technology Parks in different environments. Mr. Kettula (M.Sc. Engineering, MBA, MICB) has specialized in corporate planning, regional and national development program issues. He has over 15 years of experience and public private partnership (PPP) projects from the corporate world, as well as from the management of industrial projects.

Job Titles:

• Senior Advisor

Mr Salko brings Aikagroup vast experience in consulting and training SMEs and public organisations. His specialist fields are project management, business incubators, business development, education, industrial policy and strategies. He has worked with various commissions, such as the development and modelling of the advice and service process of a business incubator in Southern Finland, preparing a regional strategy for economic activities for municipalities, studies of setting up an innovation centre in Moscow in cooperation with Technopolis Oyj and establishing FinEst Business Network - a business cooperation network between Finland and Estonia. He has previously worked as an Attorney Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce, Attorney in the Chamber of Commerce/Keskiuusimaa and as Managing Director of Central Uusimaa Development Centre Ltd. Mr Salko brings Aikagroup vast experience in consulting and training of SMEs and public organisations. His specialist fields are project management, business incubators, business development, education, industrial policy and strategies.