Harri Sieppi

I co-founded Witted, a Nordic software consultancy, and led it as CEO to a Nasdaq First North listing in 2022. Today I work as a specialist at Inderes and serve on the boards of three companies. I write about working life, leadership and the IT services industry – mostly in Finnish.

Now

• 2026–InderesSpecialist
• 2026–IVALO CreativeChair of the board
• 2026–Career.fiBoard member
• 2026–HälsaBoard member

Before

• 2016–2025WittedCo-founder and CEO · IPO on Nasdaq First North 2022
• 2010–2016Citrus Solutions & ConmioSales and business unit leadership

Education

• 2026MSc in Economics and Business AdministrationLUT University
• 2008BBAHaaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences

Research

I self-publish empirical working papers on the Finnish economy and working life – public register data and company disclosures, worked through with methodology, robustness checks and limits included, not just headline numbers. The papers are in Finnish; short summaries follow.

• A PhD premium? Education and pay among Finnish listed-company CEOs

  Among 112 CEOs with comparable 2025 pay data (101 with a master's degree, 11 with a PhD), a PhD is linked to about 33% higher pay once company size is controlled for (t = 2.2) – correlation, not causation. The link is fragile: it is not significant without the size control, and loses significance if two companies are dropped from the 11-person PhD group.

  Read online (in Finnish) · Download (in Finnish, PDF)
• Population decline and individual economic position: three strategies for an ageing Finland

  Weighs three strategies for a shrinking, ageing population – emigration, backing labour immigration, or staying – against register data and the literature. A back-of-envelope calculation finds Uusimaa's roughly 17% nominal income edge over shrinking regions shrinks to about half once housing costs are factored in, and emigration's "place premium" barely applies between two high-income countries.

  Read online (in Finnish) · Download (in Finnish, PDF)
• Does a PhD pay off? A story and the data behind it

  Register data shows almost no wage gap between PhD holders and master's holders in the same field – sometimes even negative early in a career (Labore 2025). Yet at the very top, among listed-company CEOs, the same credential correlates with roughly a third higher pay in a small, fragile sample: a PhD's payoff depends on whether the employer actually needs research, not on the degree itself.

  Read online (in Finnish) · Download (in Finnish, PDF)

Contact me on LinkedIn. Writings, working papers and media appearances are on the Finnish main page.