Speakers and Chairs Bios

Annu Nieminen is CEO of Kasvuryhmä (“Growth Collective”, www.kasvuryhma.fi), a Finnish non-profit movement mobilising mid-sized companies to rediscover their purpose, grow and shape the world. Kasvuryhmä is a concrete case example of a nation-wide movement aiming to make the society more entrepreneurial via boosting risk-taking and sense of purpose in established organisations, some of which have partly lost their original entrepreneurial spark.

Currently Kasvuryhmä consists of 180+ entrepreneurs and CEOs who actively challenge and support each others’ ambitious growth plans (of on average “doubling their business before 2020”) in peer-to-peer coaching teams. The movement aims to serve as a counterforce to the overall apathy in the Finnish economy, as well as to the all too common global phenomenon where after their first successes, established organisations occasionally get too comfortable, failing to renew themselves to stay relevant in the ever-changing market environments.

Prior to her work on mobilising Finnish “grown-ups” to become “scale-ups”, Ms Nieminen worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and founded leadership initiative The Real Leadership Gap (www.realleadershipgap.com).