9.6.2010

European Day of the Entrepreneur brought ethically sustainable new ideas into discussion and encouraged seeking alternative ideas

European Day of the Entrepreneur was organised in Turku for the 8^th time. This year’s theme “Be a Forerunner! with creativeness and trust” got about 350 participants pondering on topics like potentials of creativeness in business and significance of trust in co-operation. Viestintä Ground Oy’s Anna Sorainen worked as the Day’s professional moderator.

Kalle Euro, the Director of Turku Region Development Centre, gave the opening speech. He underlined the connection between the creativeness and trust. Development of Turku Region requires stronger trust between public organisations and private companies as well as among actors within the same sector.

Juuriharja Consulting Group’s stake holder and Doctor of Psycology Jari Salo stressed the ethics of business, which has genuine influence on the company’s success. Leadership is a more and more important question these days. Director’s consistent action based on the company’s shared values ensures the company’s successful business activities. Ethicalness is a question of know-how and actions are decisive, especially actions of the director.

Laitilan Wirvoitusjuomatehdas’ General Manager Rami Aarikka told his company’s story of development in a dynamic and humoristic way. According to him, a company’s development is often a sum of successes, mistakes and errors, in which profit can be made as a result of bold decisions and well-defined choices. One has to do as one’s heart tells, and that may be enough to carry on for a fairly long way.

In the last speech of the first half of the seminar, professor Alf Rehn of Åbo Akademi warned on getting used to the routines and being avarage. Often the bottleneck of development is that once one achieves a presumed objective, one is satisfied with it. To be successful, one has to critically review one’s way of action and decision making, and has to seek new ideas or alternative concepts outside mainstream.

The Day was concluded with a new EDE Cocktails. At the beginning of the evening programme, four companies were awarded with Entrepreneurial Spirit of Turku Awards. The Awards winners were: VAK Oy, Axel Tehnologies Oy, Oversol Oy and the Special Award was given to Elomatic Oy.

All in all, this year’s EDE was successful in renewing its concept internally and externally. The Day gave strong incentives to unbiased development of business, to bravely look for alternatives, to seek for creative and ethical solutions, as a key to success.

Participants arrive to the Day