Hunt for CTO of the Year gets underway

Nominations accepted until 15 December

Technology Academy Finland and Spinverse will present the third CTO of the Year award next January to a chief technology officer who has enhanced the competitiveness of a Finnish company through their work. The award aims to draw attention to the important role played by CTOs in their companies, a role that often receives little recognition.

Choosing the winner involves assessing both the work of the CTO and the company itself. The CTO must do more than simply create significant added value for their company through technology. They must also be an inspirational leader and team-builder. In addition, the award-winning company must have an effective innovation process that encourages employees to participate in the process at all levels in the organization.

Previous winners of the CTO of the Year award are outstanding Finnish CTOs: the 2012 award went to Petra Lundström, who was CTO at Fortum Corporation at that time, for her extremely strong combination of competence in technology, business and management. The winner of the 2011 CTO award was F-Secure’s CTO Pirkka Palomäki, who has played a major role at F-Secure as it developed into one of the global technology pioneers in the field of data security.

Finnish CTOs: “Boldness in introducing new technology!”

The nominations round for the CTO of the Year award was launched at the CTO Forum on 19 September, which brought together Finnish CTOs to network and exchange ideas about the role and significance of CTOs in companies.

The participants expressed the wish that government projects would be used to support new and innovative technologies at an early stage. To be a pioneer requires boldness in introducing new technologies and subsidies for major pilot investments. Government projects can create a domestic market, which in turn will support Finnish companies in developing into global operations.

One point made at the forum was that the best ideas often emerge when representatives from different business sectors get together to discuss various solutions to problems that they share, and the participants would like to see more opportunities for networking and cooperation between different sectors.

The CTO of the Year award and the CTO Forum are joint projects of Technology Academy Finland (TAF), Spinverse Oy, Confederation of Finnish Industries EK and Sitra.

The nominations round is now underway and proposals for the winner of the 2013 award will be accepted until 15 December at www.vuodencto.fi.

Criteria

The CTO of the Year:

• adds considerable value to the performance of their company through technology
• communicates effectively with all stakeholders about the company’s technologies and the benefits they give
• is an inspiring leader and team-builder

The CTO’s company possesses:

• a technology-enabled product and service portfolio that is innovative, widely known and globally competitive
• a strong network for technology collaboration
• an effective innovation process that encourages participation in the process at all levels in the organization

Assessmentof all these criteria takes into account the size of the company. Nominations must include contact details for the person making the nomination in case the jury needs more detailed information about the nomination.