Jukka Ala-Mutka

Jukka speaks on several topics, including but not limited to, nordic leadership, innovation, communication, and artificial intelligence.

Jukka Ala-Mutka is passionate about finding new ways to lead in the era of artificial intelligence, platforms, and social media. He has founded six companies, executed large change programs for large enterprises and given hands-on training for over 200 new business ideas, e.g., in

• Aalto University Startup Center,
• Aalto University Executive Education, and
• XAMK Small Business Center.

His core competences are a business in the digital era, agile culture, growth hacking, change management, and shared leadership. He worked as a business development manager at Siemens and as a strategy consultant for large enterprises, SMEs, and technology startups. 

Alongside his work, he has done academic research at

• McGill University in Canada, and
• in Finland at Aalto University,
• Helsinki School of Economics, and
• Tampere University of Technology.

Jukka Ala-Mutka focuses on issues of shared leadership, growth hacking, and growth culture in the era of artificial intelligence, and often he builds on counter-intuitive analyses of core assumptions within leadership thinking.

Jukka has written three books about strategic agility, customer experience, and shared leadership & the culture of experimentation. Jukka Ala-Mutka taught innovation and strategy for nine years (2006-2015) in Helsinki School of Economics and Aalto University, Finland.

Keynote theme: Nordic Leadership

Regardless of the differences between the Nordic countries, the world sees the Nordics as one region which forms a specific cultural cluster, and they do share many of the same values. Nordic leadership includes characteristics such as inclusive decision making, teamwork, flat organizational structures, and it is associated with motivated employees and an inclination toward innovation and competitiveness.

Leaders widely delegate responsibility and share power, i.e., decision making. On the other side, everybody expects to be heard and to be involved in decisions, which concern their work. There is a high degree of interdependence and trust, and communication is open and flows in all directions. Organizations experiment and fail, but first of all, they learn from mistakes and failures, of course.

The culture of experimentation is a prerequisite for innovation to happen. If you do not dare to experiment, try out things that no one has tried before, and allow for people in your organization to admit when they have failed, you will never evolve and find new solutions to problems. Nordic leadership is straightforward, meaning that people care about results, and will often go directly to the point when a problem needs to be solved.

Characteristics of Nordic Leadership

• Inclusive
• Open and transparent
• Responsive
• Result-oriented
• Purpose-driven
• Caring

Nordic Leadership approaches things in a relatively flexible, but goal-oriented way. They can act swiftly and can adapt quickly. It is an interactive and dynamic process, which involving and including all employees.

Nordic Leadership based on fundamentals of Nordic values, where human development (UNDP), transparency (Corruption Perceptions Index), education (OECD PISA), happiness (WEF), security (e.g., the least corrupt countries by International Police Science Association) and competitiveness (e.g. Finland is the third most innovative country in the world by Bloomberg Innovation Index 2019 ) sets the critical success factors. No wonder that Nordics are in the top 10 countries in the world in every category.

In Jukka Ala-Mutka’s new book, Johtajuuden rakentajat  (cases from 12 Finnish companies), first published in Finnish in 2019 (a new book coming in English in 2021), Jukka Ala-Mutka working with the critical aspects of shared leadership and the culture of experimentation – how to start the change towards shared leadership and what are the fundamental problems during the journey. Here he discusses the challenging the present change management truths and inconsistent demands placed on leaders, and how the best servant leaders manage to deal through the transition. Continuous transformation is why you need to develop a culture of evolution, and the concept of Nordic Leadership is a much-needed guide for any company that seeks to succeed in the digital transformation and the age of artificial intelligence.

Nordic leadership is something to be desired, but not yet fully discovered.

Teemat: Nordic Leadership: trust, psychological safety, equality, and participatory culture | The Bossless Upside-down Organization | The Art of Original Thinking and Innovation | From Growth Hacking to Growth Culture | The Culture of Experimentation & Agility | Shared Leadership in the Era of AI-driven Platforms and Social Media | How to Lead Millennials in the Workplace