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Meet DIMECC: What does Disruptive Renewal Officer stand for, Antti Karjaluoto?

Interview with Antti Karjaluoto, DIMECC’s Disruptive Renewal Officer

Antti and Alma in front of artist Taro Malinen’s freshly painted mural “The City”.

Pitch yourself in three sentences?

As an ecosystem lead, my job is to promote the digital transformation of industries. I bring companies together to co-create state-of-the-art future solutions. If you need a forward-going facilitator with extensive network, I’m your guy!

You have an intriguing title, Disruptive Renewal Officer, what does it stand for?

My work concentrates in driving change and renewing business. Some see future as full of threats, but we see it as a blue sea of opportunities. Disruption is a possibility.

You are Ecosystem Lead in the Finnish Advanced Manufacturing Network. What is FAMN?

We have been running the Intelligent Industry ecosystem since 2017 and now together with the Technology Industries of Finland decided to scale those operations into Finnish Advanced Manufacturing Network (FAMN). FAMN connects manufacturers and ICT sector, being the main forum of cooperation in Finland. FAMN initiates and leads initiatives around areas such as automation, robotics, data, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The network also plans and implements joint RDI projects, provide innovation coaching and accelerator services, arrange training academies, share information on regulation and industry standards, and jointly strengthen the attractiveness, diversity and brand of the manufacturing industry.

What is the importance of ecosystems to companies?

In today’s business world, the greatest possibilities happen not only inside one company, but between companies. For example, in data sharing, a company can benefit from developing its own data products, but the new business models require sharing data in the value chain or even beyond it. Ecosystems offer a haven of trust and include companies who are like-minded, and are thus a good platform to investigate these kind of new business possibilities.

What motivates you the most in your work?

Bringing together companies and seeing how co-creation makes the advance faster and better than they could alone, is very satisfying. In my job I’m not only following, what is changing, and I’m not only a part of it, but I’m making it happen.

What has been one of the funniest or weirdest coincidents in your career? Did you learn anything from it?

When I was meeting customers at Hannover fair few years back, an extremely friendly elder gentleman invited us to join us in the party that was held in his stand. It turned out that the stand, and actually the whole company literally belonged to him, and that Mr. Beckhoff still leads his company at the front. Such enthusiasm and devotion for one’s life work is admirable.

What do you do in your free time?

I’m a sport enthusiast, so cross-country skiing, orienteering, mountain biking and running. Every winter I have a competition with our CEO Harri Kulmala regarding who skies more kilometers. Earlier I did well in this competition because Harri was travelling a lot, however during the COVID time I lost considerably. The latest becomer in my family is a puppy, Australian labradoodle named Alma, so we are participating puppy school and things like that.

Recommend something to read?

As having worked at WEF (World Economic Forum) back in 2015, I still closely follow their quality publications and insights: https://www.weforum.org/

And to watch?

As having lived most of my life in Tampere, I am a big fan of Kummeli – https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Kummeli (unfortunately, available in Finnish only)

One response to “Meet DIMECC: What does Disruptive Renewal Officer stand for, Antti Karjaluoto?”

  1. Simo says:

    Nice guy and good story!

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