European CTO of the Year 2015 award to be launched

Spinverse and EIRMA, the European Industrial Research Management Association, will launch the quest for Europe’s CTO of the Year 2015 on April 28th. The CTO of the Year Award is to highlight the role of the most prominent leaders of technology-based growth, promoting innovations to renew European industry and to upturn competitive advantage.

The CTO’s (Chief Technology Officers) have an invaluable impact in assuring the competitiveness and successful renewal of European industries, but the value of their work has not been fully recognized. To highlight their role, the European CTO of the Year was awarded for the first time in 2014. The concept is pan-European and as Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General for Research and Innovation, European Commission says, “Europe needs to celebrate those who advance technology and innovate. Initiatives like the “CTO of the year award” are very welcome as they lead to role models and further strengthen innovation in Europe.”

The award will again be given in two categories, SMEs and large companies, to the most innovative person bringing significant value to the company growth through technology. Inspiring team-builder and a leader, the awardee communicates the benefit of technology to all stakeholders in an understandable way. The company represented by him or her has an innovative and competitive – or rapidly gaining terrain – technology-enabled offering in Europe and globally.

In 2014, in the large companies category, Professor Richard Parker, Director of Research and Technology at Rolls-Royce, was awarded, based on his personal leadership, long career in technology innovation and successful collaborations. In the SME category, Dr Gert-Jan Gruter, CTO of Avantium, received the award due to his impressive and forward-thinking personal contributions and the company’s work on advanced catalytic research and green chemistry.

“The CTO of the Year award Europe is a platform to recognize and promote the importance of technology and innovation in Europe” says Pekka Koponen, CEO of Spinverse. “We are again excited to receive high-quality nominations”, he continues. Spinverse has organised the corresponding award in Finland since 2010.

You are invited to nominate your candidate for the European CTO of the Year 2015. The call for nominations is open online from April 28th to September 18th at www.ctoeurope.net. Your nominee can be any European CTO driving technology-based sustainable growth not only in his or her company of any industry, but also in Europe and globally.

More information:

Laura Koponen, Managing Director, Spinverse
Laura.Koponen(a)spinverse.com ;  +358 40 5450008

Michel Crispi, Secretary General, EIRMA
info(a)eirma.org

http://www.ctoeurope.net/