Senator Europe

4.1.1 Senator as a Member of JCI Family

As I stated earlier this interview was done in person as I knew SE in advance from my personal network. We met in the office of his company in Jyväskylä, Finland on Monday 14^th of March 2016 at 13.00 (1PM). SE educational background is from university with MBA majoring marketing and leadership. Besides being an entrepreneur he created a career as a professor of entrepreneurship and marketing in Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences. SE joined local JCI chapter in year 1977 and was active member until end of year 1987 when it was time for his retirement from the chapter with honors of a JCI Senator. On average the cost of JCI membership at the local chapter was annually 174 USD (rate calculated 3.5.2016 and converted from Euros). SE company was established in 1980. SE stated he gained 110 % of his business skills by being an active member of JCI network highlighting the skills of networking capability, leadership skills with presentation and performance skills. Currently SE is not active in JCI network since he does not participate any local, regional, national nor international events. He stated being active Senator during the first decade from the age of forty to fifty after receiving his honors by participating JCI events. SE has not been a National President of JCI Finland during his JCI career but has been in the National Board of Directors.

4.1.2 Senator as an Owner of SME Exporting Company

Business sector where SE operates through his company is education and consultation. Impact of his company to the world comes from the team entrepreneurship education products and services where the main product is a training program of creating and educating new team coaches to support the vision of the company. The vision is that they will be a leading entrepreneurial education global learning network called teampreneurship in 2037. SE company has customers both domestic in Finland as well as globally through exporting activities. As a business model in exporting SE prefers to use local agents in a target market who sell the license of the brand SE owns through his company. They have customers in every continent of the world and also every area according to how JCI divides the world but the main focus is within Europe. Even having a global customer base SE refers he has not gain export sales through JCI network at all so amount of his global accounts within JCI network is 0 %.

He also recognized the importance of domestic JCI network with his earlier company where he gained up to 50 % of annual turnover from the network.

4.1.3 Community Impact of SE

Employment of SE company match with the criteria of SME as he employs six staff members full time and fifteen part-time besides him. Annual turnover of the company is 1 107 370, 00 USD which also matches the criteria of SME according to definition set by European Union (EU Commission, 2003). Annually estimated his company pays tax totally 332 211, 00 USD to the local community including all possible tax rates in Finland which equals to 30 % of business. Personally he contributes back to the community by serving in the board of directors of many non-profit organization during the years. He also share his knowledge of learning revolution in all levels of education from kindergartens’ to vocational schools’ and universities.

He has been granted the honorary title called Counsellor of Education (the Finnish equivalent to knighthood) by former President of Finland in 2010 from his lifework as an educator of young active citizens of tomorrow.

Since the interview was done in person and we have a history between us I also received data outside the semi-structured questionnaire. He recognized the huge influence of JCI ideology and operations to his current education business where one of the main idea is to be highly networked as an individual to different professional networks. Without being a member of JCI he would have probably not established the company he owns today. He also recalled being the first director in national board of JCI Finland operating as Training Director and starting national training programs in practice for individual JCI members around Finland. He remembered running for National Deputy President before becoming seriously ill and having to withdraw from the elections which ended his JCI career in National Board.

SE gave a critical point of view to the JCI network as he considered it to last up to ten years after a person is put on retirement from the hobby at the age of forty. After that the created network will start to fade away which happened to him after he was no longer participating JCI events at the age of fifty or more. Also very important opinion was raised by SE as he recognized the importance of JCI network on opening of SME export activities in early 1990’s in Finland. This was due to fact that those days most of the JCI members were entrepreneurs or CEOs’ of the companies and they got important support from the others in their personal networks and most of them were members of JCI Finland. Therefore JCI ideology of global thinking had huge influence on those active citizens and entrepreneurs of Finland in early 1990’s before Nokia became a leading technological company in the world which had huge influence on economic growth of the communities in Finland. Before that only national forest

industry owned by government was able to have export business so JCI ideology of the global world was an input before global thinking became a hit with success of Nokia.

4.1.4 Logic Model of Senator Europe