My Research and my Thoughts

Motivation - Why                                     

Over the years, I have had to study various topics, for business, for academic interest, or just for fun.

This page collects some of these thoughts together in a semi chronological order. Parts of these texts may have lost their point already. But even so, they still reflect the world at the time of writing.

Prologue - How it all started

After 20 years in business, I realized that I know far too little on far too few important topics. Something had to be done. Especially the mental trauma caused the the fall of Nokia's Mobile Phone business forced me to stop and think.

After several years of thinking (and a whole lot of work too), the big picture started to emerge. The academic version of this was packetized in the Book. See down below.

The real world version of these thoughts I have found very applicable when examining the broader creative destruction currently on-going all over due to new Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), initially mobile communications and others and now driven by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud. All of the writings below are dealing with this very same paradigm shift in a way or another.

Chapter 1 - System Intelligence ?

I had the privilege to participate two excellent courses in the good old Helsinki University of Technology, before it was merged with two other Universities to become the fabulous new Aalto University.

The first of the courses made me write an introduction text based on my own experiences as a system design engineer and business leader. In Finnish the question is Ohjaako Insinööriä Systeemiajattelu

Chapter 2 - System Intelligence !

The second course made me to draft an analysis of a "Small World" phenomenon where a specific type of system intelligence dominates all the behavior and dynamics, in Finnish Systeemiälykäs Pieni Maailma.

This writing has been published in the book Systeemiïäly 2005, edited by Esa Saarinen and Raimo P. Hämäläinen
(available in https://sal.aalto.fi/publications/pdf-files/systeemialy2005.pdf)

Chapter 3 - Basic Technologies

During my early PhD studies, I spent some time with specific policy, technical and marketing issues, such as

Spectrum licensing

Spam emails

DVB-H

3GPP/IMS

GPRS Pricing

The DVB:H study was a result of a collaborative project and team effort of four plus one. Thank you Toivo, Teemu, Tero and Matti for good work and interesting discussions.

These study papers used to be openly available on the HUT server but now it is Aalto time and such old data has been deleted there. Therefore I re-publish them here.

Chapter 4 - Leaning forward

The Book includes 6 journal and conference papers which are not available for free. The manuscripts are available in here ( for free :-).

1. The first one is a developed version of a learning project, focusing on Push of Cellular service, a.k.a. PoC. This effort was strongly encouraged by Sakari and it took me as far as to Sydney, Australia to present this in a Conference. Thank you Sakke for pushing this forward.

2. And then I spent some interesting time on Systems thinking applied to Wireless Access with Thomas.

3. The next paper focused on Mobility as a Service one more case study, also with Thomas. This paper provided me a very good excuse to travel to Hawaii, to HICSS 48.

4. and another MaaS paper where Ville joined the effort. Thank you Thomas and Ville for these joint achievements.

5. To gain some quantitative data we run some modelling related to Spectrum regulation, again with Thomas.

6. And finally I worked hard (alone) on Collaboration in Standardization. I think this paper most likely is the most important piece of work I have done in this space. The paper was further developed, marginally but still, and then incorporated into a book. Here is the last version of the book chapter.

Chapter B

The last leg of the journey was the public defense of the Dissertation, where the first salvo is the defendant's Lectio Praecursoria

The Book - That's Why

If it ever occurs to me to think whether there are any priorities in my doings, I would tend to think that the Doctoral Dissertation, after all, is my most important consolidated wrinting, so far.

The book is available on Aalto University web site but it may be a bit difficult to find. Ladies and gentlemen, The Book

Chapter B+1

The journey until here, however, encouraged me to continue. The next trip I jumped in was to the world of Ecosystems and Innovations with Jarkko. Thank you Jarkko. This is currently the most popular of all these papers I have been involved with.

We decided to continue and created another a little bit Systems Thinking oriented paper on Innovation Management.

Chapter B+2

Standardization keeps on haunting me. I came across two very thoughtful lads, Jussi and Julius and we decided to write some papers on Standardization.

Jussin ja Juliuksen kanssa tehtiin kaksi minun mielestä kiinnostavaa katsausta. Heidän kansantaloustieteellinen näkemys oli minulle kokonaan uutta asiaa ja siksi hyvin kiinnostavaa. Suomeksi kirjailtiin Standardisoinnista ja taloustieteestä joka julkaistiin Kansantaloudellisessa Aikakauskirjassa.

Then Jussi found out that Standardization has not been studied much at all recently by the top economists . Therefore we wrote in English on the current state of standards related research in economics Connecting the dots. This paper was published in the International Journal of Standardization Research (IJSR) in 2021

This same great team focused also to relationship between General Purpose Technologies and standardization. The linkage is important since standardization aspects provide possibility to better evaluate technologies and their general purpose nature. This paper was published in the Telecommunications Policy which some people consider a bit higher level journal than any of the earlier papers.

Chapter B+3

I have been walking and talking is various other (mine) fields, too, not only academic. As one outcome, I was asked to write some thoughts on Open Data and Open Innovation. Yearbook of the European Commission related activities. You need to browse to page B35 to find my writing. I wanted to define some shades of grey to the very general discussion on Trust. In Finland we talk about trust as our strength but I think we need to be more specific what kind of trust we are taking about. And of course, All the other writings in the Yearbook are very good, too :-)

Luku B+4

Sitten piti kirjoittaa vielä jotain aiheesta Data. Vaikka meillä suomenkielessä ei oikein ole edes kunnollista sanaa sille. Ehkäpä juuri siitä syystä pitääkin kirjoittaa. Kirjoitus liittyi maan hallituksen antamaan tietopoliittiseen selontekoon, projektiin, jossa sain olla mukana.

Saattaa olla, että ajauduin tällaiseen projektiin erilaisten aikaisempien kirjoitusten ja puheiden vuoksi, kuten tämä lyhyt teksti, joka laadin yhden minulle keskeisen yhteisön tarpeisiin. TEKissä piti aloittaa aika lailla perusteista.

Chapter B+5

Some time ago I had an opportunity to participate a dialogue in ETSI to explore the future of standardization, including and especially from the perspective of data economy. The Task Force created a report where I had provided some contribution for the future of data related standards. The complete deliverable, as a result of the team work is in the form of a report: ETSI TFBR report.

Chapter B+6

in 2021 I was tasked to create a course in Aalto University on Innovation Leadership, Compatibility and Standardization. It became obvious that higher level understanding on how to use standardization as a tool is rather thin in Finland. We have reasonable training available on how to utilize existing standards but my intention is to go beyond. The course is available in the form of 12 hours of video lectures and some additional material. The course is intended to all Master's and post graduate students and possibly also to all Aalto Alumni folks, too.

As an extra outcome of this course two conference papers where published in EURAS conference in 2023 and 2024. The later paper was a joint effort of Ana Paula Gonzalez-Torres and me. She is interested in ethics, AI and how to use standards to solve some key issues of today. I found this perspective very topical now when Europe is heading to implement strong regulation for data economy. The conference paper Governing Through Standards: Artificial Intelligence and Values is the first outcome. We developed the idea further in our research. The upgraded paper was published in the Journal of Ethics and Information Technology, title of our paper is AI regulation: maintaining interoperability through value-sensitive standardisation.

Chapter B+7

Over the years I have had many lectures in various locations and forums. In practise all these presentations have the system thinking framework applied to the case people are considering.

Just to get started, I post here a link to a conference where I had a key note on 5G and new ecosystems

Here is another presentation on data economy and ecosystems with the specific perspective on How to organize road traffic in the future.

When the Mobile Communications is evolving further, it may be of soma value to take a systemic deep dive and see what has happen and what may happen next. It is very interesting to note that Mobile Communication used to be a self standing ecosystem of its own. But today it is more and more tightly coupled with the applications and services running of the top of the network layer. Aalto and ETLA have had a research project on this very topic and in this context I created a draft paper, open for comments, to examine the past in order to drive the future. Systemic model of Mobile Communications aims to address issues beyond its title.

Chapter B+8

One specific project in my later life has been the membership in SFS Standardointilautakunta, Technical Board on Standardization which approves the general principles and procedures of standardization work. In addition, the Technical Board approves national standards that are developed in Finland.

In this context I connected the standardization research in Aalto to the professional work in SFS. In practice Ana Paula and I were invited to join the SFS Standards Team SR315 Artificial Intelligence. And at the end of the day, I ended up being the chairperson of this team for one term of 3 years.

The work in the SR315 is very practical where the experts provide all the content. This work is very valuable particularly now when the EU has implemented the AI Act, regulations for use of AI in high risk applications. In this context, Alpo Värri and I provided an overview of this work as it stands today (in 2024) in publication of Matemaattis-luonnontieteellisten alojen Akateemiset ry (MAL), with the title Standardointi lievittää huolta tekoälystä.

One more deliverable in this stream is a presentation to motivate people to look at the standards as one way to interpret the legal text in regulations using technical and operational definitions, which may be easier for engineers and business leaders to understand than the legal text of directives and acts etc. In this presenation I present also some higher level reasoning to take AI and the overall digital transformation as a opportunity for better life. Standardoinnista Valjaat Tekoälylle.

Standardointi voi olla myös tehokas väline osana yrityksen tai organisaation strategiaa. Mitenkään tyhjentävästi en tietenkään tätä yhdessä esityksessä pysty kertomaan. Mutta jonkinlainen tiivistys Aallon kurssista, josta jo kerroin tuolla ylempänä, tämä esitys voi olla.Pidin tämän esityksen SFS:n sisäisessä tilasuudessa, Standardointi Strategian vällineenä

Chapter B+9

Chapter B+N

Ja lopuksi kait voi heittäytyä kokonaan vapaalle, istua kannon nokkaan pohtimaan menneisyyttä.

Sitä voi tehdä myös itseään tutkiskellen. MAL: Kohtalona Nokia kts. sivu 15..

tai yhdessä muiden kanssa... Juuso Pekkinen kyselee..kaikenlaista Joukolta ja minulta.

.. tai mennä vielä kauemmaksi historiaan ja katsoa mitä on tullut tehdyksi teekkarina kuten suunniteltu suodattimia.

Ja sitten on vielä ne kaikki muut jutut, joihin teekkarina tulee sotkeudettua, Onneksi on... ne kaikki Otaniemen ajan ystävät.

Kenet kerran mukaansa temmannut...