30 under 30 in Northern Europe

By Andrew Scholfield, Gina-Marie Cheeseman, Hans-Peter Siefen, Jukka Niemelä

The Greatest Young Leaders Under the Age of 30 in Northern Europe

Similarly to 2012 and 2013, Nordic Business Report continues to produce interesting rankings of the people in the business sphere. In 2012, we ranked the greatest business thinkers in Finland, and in 2013 the greatest business thinkers in Nordics. This year we decided to rank the younger generation – the people who really show us the trends of the future.

The scope was also upgraded significantly. We ended up having basically the whole Northern Europe covered in this 30 under 30 ranking: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia. The task was demanding, but the result is extremely interesting! If only the whole younger generation was like this, the world would be saved in no time. And those of us who are a bit older, let’s learn from the example of these young leaders and continue to show a good example ourselves as well.

And those of us who are a bit older, let’s learn from the example of these young leaders and continue to show a good example ourselves as well.

The Criteria and Results

Similarly to Thinkers 20 rankings in 2012 and 2013, the essential criteria for evaluating possible candidates were: results achieved, business sense, originality, practicality and impact of their ideas, international outlook and responsibility in their actions.

Each jury member organization built up a ranking of names from their own countries and after that we started to work on a synthesis of all the 8 countries combined. Many extremely interesting names were left out. We had about two hundred good nominees listed by the jury, of which 30 naturally made it to the final list.

Unfortunately there are again more males than females among these thirty people. Finding successful and promising women was still difficult for the jury, although the young generation is claimed to have more and more females as entrepreneurs and leaders. That is the way to go! Let’s hope the gender distribution will be the other way around some day.

Want to know who are on the list? Check out the list and the jury on the latest issue of Nordic Business Report here »