Professor of Intellectual Capital Management Anu Puusa from the University of Eastern Finland’s Business School has been invited to give a TED Talk. Puusa’s TED Talk deals with the special characteristics of cooperatives and with the model’s impact on both a global and Finnish scale. In relative terms, Finland is probably the most “cooperative” country in the world: a population of 5.5 million people has more than 7 million cooperative memberships.
TED (technology, entertainment, design) is a non-profit that has grown from a conference to an international and multidisciplinary phenomenon in the 2000s. In the TED Talk series and in TED conferences, distinguished experts give speeches of no more than 18 minutes. The most popular TED Talk videos attract tens of millions of views. Puusa gave her TED Talk in a conference for invited guests on 8 April, and it will become available on TED Institute's website a few months later.
Puusa is a distinguished scholar of, and an expert in, cooperatives, and she is a Board Member in Cooperatives Europe, as well as in Pellervo (a service and a lobbying organisation for all Finnish co-operatives), and Northern Karelia Cooperative Society (PKO). She is also a member of the Executive Board of the Advisory Board for Cooperatives and Kooperatiivi ry.
“Professionally speaking, it is one of the greatest honours to be invited to give a speech on this global and prestigious forum. There is clearly a demand for cooperatives and their value-based thinking, since the maximisation of profit as the only and primary task of companies is being increasingly questioned, and greater social responsibility is called for. In Finland, our cooperatives are jointly owned anchor assets, and their foundations should be better understood. This lack of awareness is not limited to Finland alone, and that is why I am particularly pleased to be able to speak about this important issue on a prominent and impactful forum,” Puusa says.
Cooperatives are an old, well-established and globally significant form of business. There are over 3 million cooperatives worldwide, with around one billion members in them. Finland, too, has a long tradition of consumer and producer cooperatives. In the course of history, Finland has accumulated unique management expertise relating to cooperatives.
Professor Anu Puusa's Ted Talk, The case for co-ops, the invisible giant of the economy, can be viewed on the TED website.
