Sari Kola

Sari Kola holds a doctorate in Strategic Innovation Management and is in the final stretch of her second doctorate in Leadership, titled “The Power of We”. She is a global citizen with a through experience in managing people, business and innovation through 20+ years of working experience in companies like Nokia, Elisa and KONE in four continents. She is passionate about building new business and creating high performing teams across organizational boundaries. She is the author of Ecosystem Handbook a practical hands-on guide to managing collaboration.

Today Sari focuses on growth strategy, open innovation, ecosystems and digitalization from multiple directions:

·      Innovaatiotohtori: Keynote speaker and advisor on strategy, innovation management and collaboration

·      Researcher fellow and educator focusing on ecosystems, innovation and leadership in Turku School of Economics. Upcoming dissertation “The Power of We” brings new insight and tools to creating and capturing value in the changing business environment

·      Orchestrator of the EnergySampo ecosystem, designing and implementing system level development initiatives together for Merinova with ABB, Hitachi, Danfoss, Wärtsilä, Vaasan Sähkö, VEO and VNT Management as founding partners (https://www.energysampo.com/)

·      Board member in Alexandria Group (2021-), Welado (2022-) and BotH2nia Hydrogen Valley (2024-)

Through her experience Sari is industry agnostic and business model enthusiastic. She is a thinker and doer who enjoys collaborative problem solving in diverse cross-functional teams. Her superpower is combining various sources of information and developing crisp and focused strategies that are easy to understand and deploy.