My first visit to Japan was as part of a student exchange program when I was still a university student. I had a chance to work as trainee in a Japanese company and see the country for four months. I enjoyed that time so much that it was an easy decision to move to Tokyo to work when the opportunity came later.

Work hard and play hard. I believe that we only get one life and we should make the most of it in all areas. I find that we rarely regret things that we have done but instead regret what we did not do or try.

I have been responsible for building up a new R&D organization to meet a specific challenge a few times in my career. These all were very challenging projects in their own ways. Every time in the end it was very satisfying when the team started to function well and produce results.

I have been lucky to be able to work in different kinds of companies. I started my career in Nokia, then I was an entrepreneur in two startup companies for seven years, after which I came back to Nokia. Now my goal is to bring the good things I learned from the startup world into Nokia.

In Japan we sometimes must work long hours because of demanding customers and tough competition. I think that is just the way things are here. That is why it is important to take it easy and take time off to recover whenever the pressure lets up.