Apurva Ganoo awarded for promoting entrepreneurship
Gofore’s Chair of the Board and co-founder, M.Sc. (Tech) Timur Kärki has been awarded Business Leader of the year in an annual seminar of the Finnish business association (Suomen Liikemies-Yhdistys), Kauppalehti, and the School of Business.
Timur Kärki is one of Gofore’s four founders and is currently Chair of the Board at Gofore. Kärki was Gofore’s CEO in 2010–2019, and he has been a member of the company's Board of Directors and Chairman since 2019. Gofore is an international digital transformation consultancy.
‘Many thanks to the award jury and the association for showing me this tribute. Looking at the previous awardees, I quickly understood that at least the earlier awards have not been granted lightly. I accept this award with joy and great satisfaction,’ Kärki comments.
The jury that chose Timur Kärki as business leader of the year highlighted not only Gofore’s impressive business performance, but also the fact that Kärki has dared to shake up traditional leadership practices and to bring the spirit of modern, more open kind of corporate culture into his own industry as well as around it. The jury said Kärki also boldly discusses the pain points of the IT industry.
Founded in 2002, Gofore has grown into a versatile international digital transformation expert company that is both growing and profitable. The company who employes over 1,400 experts in Finland and elsewhere in Europe has for long built a new kind of good working life for its employees. Gofore’s culture and values emphasise close collaboration between the company and its employees, low hierarchy and an inclusive discussion culture. The fact that Gofore’s Board of Directors invited an employee to the board for the first time in 2015 can be considered an example of the transparent culture.
Two scholarships were also awarded at the seminar
Suomen Liikemies-Yhdistys (The Finnish Businessmen's Association) also awarded two scholarships of 2500 euros to two distinguished Aalto University students at the seminar.
The entrepreneurship scholarship was awarded to Apurva Ganoo, who is currently pursuing a PhD in Management Studies and Entrepreneurship with the aim of defending his PhD in 2026, and is also teaching as a lecturer in entrepreneurship at the School of Business. Apurva Ganoo has been active in the Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, the Ignite Accelerator programme and the DASH Design Hackathon. Recently, he has redesigned and conceptualised two undergraduate entrepreneurship courses.
Andrea Kumorovitzová from the School of Science was awarded the scholarship for her excellent final thesis, in which she studies the introduction of generative AI, in particular Large Language Models (LLMs), into pulp mills to facilitate a multilingual working environment. As in many other European countries, Finland has a growing demand for international talent to sustain our welfare system and business expansion plans in a global environment. This requires enabling a new multilingual working environment. Andrea Kumorovitzová's final thesis "Generative AI in Knowledge Management for Multilingual Work Environment: Case Study in Finnish Pulp Mills" explores AI-driven solutions to communication challenges in a Finnish language dominated industry. One of the main objectives of the study was to find solutions to bridge the gap between native and non-native speakers of Finnish in order to improve operational efficiency, capabilities and sense of inclusion.
Suomen Liikemies-Yhdistys, Kauppalehti, and the School of Business
Suomen Liikemies-Yhdistys (SLY) (The Finnish Businessmen's Association) is a modern network that values tradition and was founded in 1896. The SLY promotes effective, long-term, responsible and exemplary leadership in Finnish business through the Business Leader of the Year award. The first Business Leader of the Year (formerly Businessman of the Year) was chosen in 1980.
In 1898, one of the first key objectives of the almost 130-year-old association was to expand Finnish-language commercial education and disseminate economic knowledge. The Kauppalehti was founded as a means to this end. At the same time, the association's own editorial work laid the foundations for a Finnish-language business glossary. In the same year, the leaders of the association also influenced the start of Finnish-language business education in Finland. They helped to found the Businessmen's Trade College (Liikemiesten kauppaopisto), whose matriculation exam classes formed the School of Economics (now the Aalto University School of Business) in 1911.
The business leaders of the year from the previous years
Please find the recording of the event in Youtube and at the end of this page.
26:10 Keynote by business leader, School of Business alum Elina Björklund around creating added value through branding and storytelling: “Arvonlisää brändillä, tarinalla ja kuluttajaymmärryksellä – vastuullisesti” (in Finnish)
1:24:30 Apurva Ganoo and Andrea Kumorovitzová (in English)
1:16:00 Greetings from the School of Business, Associate Dean of Research and International Cooperation, Professor Virpi Tuunainen (in Finnish)
1:23:15 Business leader of the year Timur Kärki (in Finnish)
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