Raise the Bar To Release the Brake

Finland does not lack diagnoses of its growth gap. Reports on productivity, taxation, regulation and labour markets have already named most of what the operating environment needs. This report aims to do something different: it asks what Finnish companies themselves should do differently, and it does so through twenty semistructured interviews with foreign-born CEOs and senior executives who are leading Finnish companies, Finnish directors with substantial international experience, and the owners of large Finnish companies. The companies they lead, or have very recently led, together represent more than €100 billion in market capitalisation and employ more than 200,000 people globally.

The argument is short. After almost two decades of crisisand-recovery optimisation, Finnish market-sector total factor productivity sits about 10% below pre-2008 levels.1 The headroom for optimisation has narrowed. What reopens the path to growth is not the sharper execution of the existing model, but renewal: the deliberate reallocation of resources, attention and people from what the company already knows how to do toward what it does not yet know how to do.
 

Culture is the layer with the shortest route to renewal

The same patterns that produce Finland's strengths — high trust, low hierarchy, professional autonomy, preparedness, attention to detail — risk producing a cautious default response to volatility. The EVA's 2026 values and attitudes survey reports that 64% of Finnish respondents themselves believe a risk-avoidant environment constrains growth. The analytical question is not whether to keep these also deep cultural patterns, but how companies organise around them to navigate volatility. That is the lever boards and executive teams have direct hands on.
 

Four brakes inside Finnish companies currently block renewal

Low-ambition targets invite optimisation rather than force a different model. Risk avoidance, which was mentioned unprompted in eight of the ten interviews, has compounded into a systematic preference for preparedness over opportunity. Choosing consensus over disagreement in homogeneous boards and executive teams hides the option that was never debated. Efficiency over renewal leaves companies polishing the existing model in markets that no longer reward it.
 

Three operational moves answer the four brakes

Raise the bar: Set inspirational targets the current operating model cannot meet, paired with a story worth signing up for, the commercial capability that converts story into revenue, and performance and reward systems that make the story credible inside the company.

Cultivate courage: Treat opportunity with the same structural seriousness that risk has long received. Add an opportunity map alongside the risk map. Replace politeness with candid disagreement; the precondition for candour is trust, not bluntness.

Bring in diverse points of view: Widen the option set by widening the team. Hiring becomes a growth investment rather than a budget line; international experience, commercial judgement and exposure to scaled competitive environments are what broaden the option set.

None of the three moves can be delivered by boards or executive teams alone. Each requires the “golden triangle” of owners, boards and executive teams to be aligned regarding seeking ambitious renewal.

If boards and executive teams act on this agenda, the effects compound. Ambition, once raised and sustained, changes the reference point for the next round of target-setting. Capability deepens through international succession and honest performance management. Culture, once shifted towards candid dialogue, becomes self-reinforcing. A three-to-five-year window is long enough to see measurable change and short enough to hold leaders accountable.

Beyond the boardroom

Renewal at the corporate level is necessary but not sufficient. Large Finnish companies set standards that ripple outward they train directors who later lead SMEs, anchor supplier standards and shape what counts as normal management practice. The states role in shaping demand, coordinating across sectors and investing in education and research sits beyond this reports scope, but it keeps the corporate reform conversation honest: companies cannot renew indefinitely against declining public investment in the foundations.
 

The methodological foundation of this report

This report is based on 20 semi-structured interviews conducted in spring 2026. The participants include foreign chief executives operating in Finland, Finnish directors with substantial international experience, and the owners of large Finnish companies.

The analysis combined an inductive reading of the interview data with a review of relevant academic and policy literature. In other words, the themes that were consistently observed in the interviews and supported by existing research were further developed into a set of key catalytic ideas.

The interviews were conducted under the Chatham House Rule, meaning that the participants are free to use the information shared, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speakers may be revealed. This enables open and candid discussion. All the insights in the report are drawn from the interviews, but the interpretations, claims, and conclusions are those of the authors and reflect their analytical synthesis of the interview material and background literature.