Author:
Tuomo Laine
Asiakasvuorovaikutuksen ratkaisut, Yritysasiakkaat, Elisa

 

I am now going tell you the story and reason behind my decision to join Elisa and more specifically the co-founder team of Elisa’s new pilot service Omaduunari. For those of you, who don’t know what Omaduunari is, it is a pilot service, which tries to help small renovation and home improvement companies to connect with new potential customers. Also it is part of Elisa’s effort to improve and digitalise services for the SME sector. But this isn’t about what Elisa is doing. This is about me.

First the basics – I have a Bachelor of Science in Information Networks in Aalto University. For 95% of you who haven’t heard about IN: in Information Networks we try to understand how to create successful services and products technically, economically but most importantly for the end-user. In other words you could say that we aim to be the some-what generalists in the Bermuda triangle of Business, Technology and the User.

Personally I’ve always been interested in entrepreneurship and have pursued these goals with a company which we founded with two of my colleagues from Information Networks. More than often I find myself spending time validating some business opportunity either for myself or for a friend. The main kick that I get out of it, isn’t the opportunity to earn money, it is the feeling of being your own boss. This means defining the goals, success criteria and the tools or actions of how your company pursues these goals. This leads me to the reason, I wanted to join Elisa and Omaduunari.

What makes Elisa a great environment for an entrepreneur-like mind?

From the first moment I got introduced to Omaduunari, I felt the enthusiasm of the people making it happen. It wasn’t just a project, it was something more personal. And most importantly I felt that my skills and personality were something that could benefit the project, but also that the people making it happen now, were all more talented in many areas than me. In other words there was much that I could learn from them. The same goes for Elisa as an organization.

Of course at times there can be moments that remind you about the fact that you are working in a company with 4 100 employees, which means there are certain limitations on how agile it can be with some things. But these moments have been almost non-existent. What is more common is the feeling of child-like enthusiasm when you get to learn about a new resource or talent inside the organization. The feeling when you come up with an idea that you are not sure how to put in action and what resources it might take (in other words you are not an expert in the field). And instead of a painful learning process which might take weeks, you can quickly find the go-to guy of that field. Two hours later you are talking face to face or in Skype with a professional in that field, and after the talk you have a clear plan on how test your idea. For me this has been the key value of Elisa thus far. For a starting entrepreneur, who is used to bootstrapping with low resources, this is the dream. “Have an idea? Go get it.”

So why did I join Elisa and Omaduunari? Simply because I get to do what I love, which is building and validating new things, with amazing people in an organization that seems to really appreciate its employees and offer them the tools that are needed for them to succeed.

Thanks for the read, and as the last note: Be open about who you are and what you want to achieve in life, and you will probably end up doing things that you enjoy.

 

Tuomo

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2016 at 08:00 and is filed under Employment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.