I have worked as a professor level academic researcher since August 2000 at Aalto University School of Business, University of Jyväskylä, Åbo Akademi University and Turku School of Economics, Currently I work as an information systems science (ISS) professor (management of digital business, POP) at Turku School of Economics, the business School faculty at the University of Turku.

I currently also work as a board professional in finance and IT service provider companies, e.g. in the board of Danske Mortgage Bank Plc., and accept board membership at the maximum in 3-4 companies at a time. I have been in the board of over a dozen companies since 1995.

I have worked professionally with IT since 1975 first in expert, then in managerial, and since 1984 in director/executive positions. The titles of my position from the functional perspective include CIO or IT director for 15 years. CTO or R&D director for 5 years, Business Division Head for 10 years, CEO or deputy CEO for 5 years Since 2009 I have worked primarily as a board professional with a short period as an executive consultant in 2009-2016). In additions to incumbent companies I have worked with several start-ups, and cumulatively with over 100 enterprises.

I do academic research on topics from which I have practical experience, typically as an executive. I have usually also consulted enterprises and/or mentored executives in these topics. My current role as the chair of ICT leaders Finland, the chair of selection committee for the CIO of the year and the digitalization executive of the year, the chair of the Finnish standardization committee for the ISO/IEC 38500 and 20000 standard families and in the collection and analysis of IT and digitalization barometer data provide useful insights to my academic research. I’m able to probe the relevancy of my research ideas, research questions and the results of my studies against these insights. In academic research, the most important starting point is, still, good knowledge about prior research, relevant theoretical basis and suitable methodologies. I attempt to conduct research on topics where these three preconditions – own practical experience, own consultancy/mentoring and/or easy accessibility to industry experts, profound theoretical and methodological understanding – meet and merge. During the recent years I have reviewed 20-25 journal and conference articles annually, which is my maximum capacity. I’m in the editorial organizations of a few magazines and a few conferences. Active reviewing helps me to improve my own research. 

With all my activities I attempt to help Finnish and other enterprises to perform better in the pursuing of the objectives with the means of IT deployment and digitalization. 

 I conduct currently research with my Ph.D. students and fellow researchers mainly on the following topics:

• Digitalization of supply chains by deploying blockchain, API and robotics technologies, 
• IT governance and systemic value creation especially inter-organizational and ecosystem IT governance,
• CIO and CDO work including IT benefits realization. I use the survey data of IT and digitalization barometer,   
• Data management and governance, especially (product) master data management and federation by developing further the federative approach to data management,
• Selection of information systems development methods,
• Payment services research, most notably mobile payments and virtual (crypto) currencies. A significant proportion of citations to my articles come from this research topic

I have taught courses on approximately 10 different topics such as option theory and various IT topics.

Currently I lecture on courses with the following topics:

• Strategic management and governance of digital business and IT
• Contemporary strategy work (digital strategy)
• Management and governance of data (DMBOK and federative approach to data governance)

In education I attempt to combine the state of the art of academic knowledge and the practice of the same issues.