Pekka Koponen

Pekka Koponen is the Founder and Chair of Spinverse. Spinverse is the platform for his passion to drive the growth of new business by innovation and to bring new technologies to market. Founded in 2004, Spinverse is the Nordic leader in innovation consulting, specialised in building and leading open innovation ecosystems and arranging public funding for them. Under Pekka’s leadership, Spinverse has helped the network of its 500 international customers raise close to 500 M€ in EU funding and coordinated over 2 B€ worth of projects. Since January 2018, Pekka has also acted as the Chair of Working Group on Innovation & Competitiveness by Technology Industries of Finland and since November 2020 as the President of European Association of Innovation Consultants.

Pekka’s extensive network covers the highest-ranking European innovation leaders from large corporations, most innovative SMEs, research institutes, universities and governmental organizations both in European Commission and Member States. 

Pekka’s experience in lobbying covers driving regulation and budget for innovation both in Finland and at EU-level.  As Chair of the Technology Industries of Finland, he has driven lobbying agenda for increasing public funding for industrial ecosystems. As a President of European Association of Innovation Consultants, he wishes to emphasise the importance of professional project building and management and industry’s role in driving European innovation. 

Before founding Spinverse, Pekka had exciting 14 years at Nokia during its growth phase.  He joined Nokia as a smart card expert for the company’s first GSM phone and wrote software that shipped in 500 million pockets.  His later achievements included cellular network market entries in a number of emerging countries, facilitating Nokia’s  ecosystem strategy and developing corporate venturing operations.  His extensive international career includes expatriate assignments in China, Singapore, UK and Czech Republic.

Pekka holds an MBA from IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Oulu. His marriage to Laura includes an extended family of five children. Former endurance-sports enthusiast, a finisher of a dozen marathons, triathlons and long-distance races in cycling and cross-country skiing, he now relaxes by snowboarding, playing golf and sailing.