Nordic Business Forum 2017
Nordic Business Forum is a yearly event held in Helsinki where business executives and entrepreneurs from various industries get a chance to meet, share, and learn ideas that improve their respective organizations. Known and inspiring speakers from all over the world and with different background are invited to share their opinions and findings on the trends about every topic that was chosen by the organizers. It was indeed a fruitful opportunity to learn and extend business networks. In 2017, the theme of the event was focused on “Responsibility, Purpose and Leadership”. Such broad topics gave the speakers freedom to express their opinion about the future of Human Resource Management, self-purposing and creation of companies’ strategies as well as the global environmental problems which affects everyone in the society.
JAMK School of Business extends their support to student development by giving them opportunities to expand their horizons. Every year, they are giving privilege to all freshmen and select 2nd year IB students to participate the local live stream of the said event in Jyväskylä. For the 2nd year IB class, attending the event for two consecutive year was an unforgettable experience of diving to the world of global business issues and development of the common future.
The beginning of the event was enchanting and impressive. Wonderful violin ensemble 2CELLOS played the covers of world famous songs, what underlined the internationality of the Forum, the first speaker Stephane Garelli started straight from shooting to people with global problems, tackling the need to reform the of common taxation legislation, monetary policies of the countries, oil crisis, and substitution of workforce with artificial intelligence. He further claimed the problem of growing economic condition of the countries and the fact of increasing inflation at the same time. His speech made audience concern about the economic situation of the world and desire to find the solution, encouraging them to start from their own firm, with what the rest of the speakers tried to help them.
Each guest step by step opened the theme of creation the best company for people to work and world to develop, starting from the pitching of your unique idea to find sponsors, that Adam Grant had explained in a great way, till the concepts of creating the best intra relationships and organizational health in the company, especially between leader and his followers, that was imparted to the audience by Patrick Lencioni. Furthermore, the concept of shifting sharing economy to collaborative economy and creating the value out of unused assets for consumers is considered as the direction of future business models development by Rachel Bostman. However, how will we manage to build trust in this industry? That was then the challenge left for growing businesses, framing up how to earn the trust of their respective markets.
Moreover, the great part of the event was devoted to the topic about self-motivation and establishment of right goals. Impressive and inspiring speech of Nick Vujicic about turning failures into the learning and the platform to success made us all stop crying about difficulties and work on achieving our goals. He has encouraged everyone to know our personal purpose in life and how can we productively affect to the organization that we are in.
The final bright speech of Will Smith showed that even the well-known and successful actor and director can face difficulties in his profession and to the point of almost giving up. However, he believed in the brighter future, overcoming your fear with the support of your family can make you to change this world, and first of all, your life.
Environmental issues went with the res line through the whole event, water and air pollutions reductions, waste management, and global warming, all of these are the focus of further humanity development as we all live in our desired planet Earth.
During the event, students had vast opportunity to talk to local entrepreneurs and representatives of various companies in Jyväskylä. Students had the chance to establish valuable networks with local companies and dive into the Finnish business culture via talking to real business executives and entrepreneurs. All of them were also excited about the event and topics. Some shared that they want to implement practices, about which they heard, in their companies in the nearest future. Majority of them were not the first timers in this event, so they also have somehow shared their impressions about NBF2016, some of the entrepreneurs even participated in the main event in Helsinki, by which they were impressed significantly.
NBF became one of the brightest experiences in students’ lives and study process. All of us are grateful that had the opportunity to be the part of bigger event and hear the speeches of great people, who inspire us in our studies. We advise all future JAMK students to take this chance and participate in the greatest business event of Nordic Countries.
Authors: Sofiya Lyulyu, Trixi Uyamot, Kirill Anton, Iuliia Okhrimchuk, Daria Sementina, and Tien Chu.