Ott Pärna, CEO

Ott Pärna is the founding CEO at the Estonian Development Fund, a public sector venture capital fund and strategic foresight unit of the state created by the Estonian Parliament in 2006. Under his leadership, the ambitious "business idea" of the Parliament has been realised into a motivated, focused and action-oriented organisation.

Born in 1976, Ott is currently finishing his doctoral research at SPRU, the Science and Technology Policy Research Centre, University of Sussex, in the UK. His research focus is the management of technological innovation in public sector services. Ott is an economist, holding also a Masters degree in Public Administration from the Tallinn Technical University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Economics from the University of Southern Denmark. Ott has also been a visiting research fellow at the Centre of Knowledge and Innovation Research, Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration.

Prior to joining the Development Fund in early 2007 and SPRU in October 2003, Ott worked from 2000 as an innovation and technology policy expert for the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, where among other things, he was a project manager for launching the Tallinn Technology Park, currently home for about 140 technology companies, including the launch-pad and R&D unit of Skype, in the campus area of Tallinn Technical University and the Estonian IT College.

In addition, Ott was responsible for a feasibility study and drafting the Estonian Design Policy as well as the Business Incubation Programme later implemented by Enterprise Estonia. Together with Statistics Estonia, he was a project initiator and leader for conducting and analysing the first Community Innovation Survey among Estonian enterprises in 2003.

Ott has also worked as a sales and administrative manager for the IT, software development and multimedia company, Datel Ltd. He has also been an entrepreneur himself, launching a company developing intercom solutions together with his university schoolmates. Over time, Ott has also provided consultancy in the areas of economic development, enterprise, technology and innovation policy, as well as strategic management in both, the private and public sectors.

Ott serves as a member of the Innovation Policy Sub-Committee for the Estonian Prime Ministers' Research Policy Council. He is also a former President of JCI Tallinn, the largest and most active arm of Junior Chamber International in Estonia. Among other things, Ott has participated in arranging several large conferences up to the size of 2300 participants (the last one, in 2008, being on the theme of Going Global). He is also an active sportsman doing different extreme sports as well as Nordic skiing and decathlon.

Aside from his mother tongue, Estonian, he is fluent in English and has a good command of Russian and Finnish.