QPR Career Stories

Meet Jaakko “Jaska” Riihinen, Principal Consultant at QPR   

After first discovering information technology in the 70s, Jaakko knew he had found his calling. His early career consisted of, among other things, founding a couple of start-ups and working in management positions in the field of ICT for many decades. However, he realized that something was still missing. He had noticed that organizations were lacking an understanding of the holistic picture of themselves. This understanding, in combination with the experience gained through multiple positions within different organizational units and functions, led him to drive enterprise architecture at Nokia before joining QPR in 2012. 
 
Jaska’s QPR story began with overseeing product development, whereafter he in the most recent years has found himself doing what he loves the most: working close to customers as an enterprise architecture consultant. In his current job, he enjoys helping customers understand themselves and their organizations, and together find ways to improve.   

Jaska sees enterprise architecture as not only modeling the current state of an organization and creating actual architecture design, but quite often he also works like a brain surgeon for an organization. After all, the nerves, blood vessels, and intestines form a holistic system in a similar way as organization, processes, and information systems do in enterprises.

“Just like a brain surgeon completes several years of experience and training first, becoming a great Enterprise Architect requires a lot of experience and a passion for the area. Pinpointing the issues and finding out how to improve the overall performance and well-being of the organization is a thrill time and again.” he highlights.

“Working at QPR for the last 9 years has been like studying in an Enterprise Architecture university. I’ve seen all sides of the coin – from R&D to consulting – and gotten to work with diverse kinds of organizations, both private and public sector. A key part of that is the valuable support and cross-fertilization of competencies provided by other QPR consultants. This has enabled me to grow and continue learning,” Jaska comments.