This is how everything started – meet our Managing Director Tapio Sulkava

We would like to introduce some of our employees. Next on the spotlight is Tapio Sulkava, the President of Kyocera Technologies Oy. As our Managing Director, he shared some interesting insights about Kyocera Technologies, his career and his life.

The longest-serving member of Kyocera Technologies – how everything started?

Initially, Kyocera Technologies Oy was a small startup in 2016 that focused on MEMS technologies and products for the global resonator market. Since then, we have grown and currently have 35 employees. We have also started to explore new opportunities to broaden the scope of our activities in the future. Kyocera Technologies is working very closely with Kyocera Corporation in Japan to bring MEMS products to the market.

But let’s go back to 2016 when Kyocera Technologies was Tikitin Oy and the company was just founded. Tapio Sulkava is one of the three founding members, and his area of expertise has been in commercial and general management from the very beginning, since the two other founding members both had strong backgrounds in MEMS research. In 2019 we carried out a company merger with Kyocera and our name changed to Kyocera Tikitin Oy. Tapio has been our Managing Director since then. Before that he was chairman of the board of Tikitin and after the merger in 2019 he continued as a member of the board of directors.

After being Kyocera Tikitin for a while, we wanted our name to be more generic so that we could approach more markets under it. And here we are now as Kyocera Technologies Oy. Being involved from the starting line makes Tapio our longest-serving employee.

Kyocera Technologies innovates extraordinary technology

Tapio is proud that our vision and the possibilities brought by technology have found a home in Kyocera. It is a win-win situation: we bring value to Kyocera’s customers and Kyocera has enabled our growth and product development. Today, Kyocera Technologies is an organization with highly educated employees and a place to learn completely new things at the top of our field. And when Tapio says “new”, he really means it: we do many things for the first time in the world, so there are always interesting problems to be solved. It’s also highly interesting to see what our technologies can reach.

Tapio also says that learning about Japanese corporate culture has been extremely rewarding and nowadays it’s joyous that we have a very diverse and international work community. Finnish engineering culture has a lot in common with Japanese culture so cooperation works well both ways.

Sport enthusiast outside the work

Apart from being a successful businessman, Tapio is also a sports enthusiast. He enjoys skiing, downhill skiing, squash, cycling, and hiking. He has even moved part of his holiday from the summer to winter to make room for winter sports.. He has also traveled extensively and seen many places. Besides great outdoor time at his cottage, his favorite travels include skiing in Hokkaido and visiting wineries.

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