OREANDA-NEWS. January 24, 2014. Lars Peter Lindfors, Neste Oil's Senior Vice President, Technology, has been named Finland's CTO of the Year for 2014.

Technology Academy Finland (TAF) presents the CTO of the Year award to a Chief Technology Officer who has made a particularly valuable contribution to the technological capabilities and growth potential of the company they work for and has been an inspiring leader and actively involved in social networking. This is the fourth time that the award, which is coordinated in partnership with Spinverse Oy and Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, has been made to date.

"The award is also a recognition of the work that everyone at Neste Oil has done," says Lars Peter Lindfors. "We have succeeded in achieving many of our goals thanks to the expertise, enthusiasm, and contribution of our teams and their commitment to our vision. Technology is a key area of expertise for Neste Oil and something that is widely valued across all our businesses. We are a small company in the oil industry and have no feedstock resources of our own. To succeed in the highly competitive international environment in which we operate, developing our own know-how has been of critical importance. We have been a pioneering developer and marketer of new, quality solutions since the beginning of the 1980s, and this award will further strengthen our commitment to continuing on this path and continuing to invest in R&D."

"Today's technological challenges are more complicated than they have ever been, and solving them calls for a broad understanding of the issues involved, extensive expert networks, and close cooperation between different functions. Collaboration between different businesses will also become increasingly important in the future, as more and more new ideas are likely to be born out of new structures and new interfaces," continues Lindfors.

"Finnish companies can look forward to a future of many more new technological innovations, I believe, as long as we continue to invest in strong basic research and education, search out partners at home and abroad, and believe in ourselves and our ability to market our products."

A total of 17 CTOs from a variety of industries were nominated for this year's award. Sustainability was one of the criteria given particular emphasis this year, according to Yrjo Neuvo, the Chairman of the Jury, which unanimously voted Lars Peter Lindfors 2014 CTO of the Year.