Academic degree: MA (Eng. Phil.)
Specialisation: User Experience, innovation, 3D modeling, 3D printing, robotics, Internet of Things
Past positions: Microsoft Ireland, Bates Advertising, McKinsey & Company, Lionbridge
Heikki Hietala has a meandering 30+ year career in IT. After spotting the convergence of IT, languages and communication as a student, he studied all three, then embarked on a career in localization and new media, as it was then called. He saw the emergence of e-commerce both as the head of the new media unit at Bates Advertising as well as the e-commerce intranet webmaster of McKinsey & Company, where his role was central in delivering new ideas and best practices to the thousands of McKinsey consultants. As a pathologically curious person, he has participated in dozens of IT projects, selling, buying and developing systems. For the past 17 years Hietala has worked as a Senior Lecturer at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, where he has distilled the essence of his teaching into two sentences: ”I don't know, but I’ll find out”, and ”It's not what you can do, it’s what you want to do.” Among students, he is known for his dialogue-based teaching style which aims at challenging the students to develop their thinking, and he sprinkles in details from his long career to illustrate what works and what doesn’t.
Publications:
Personal blog: