Behind this story is Y4 Works, a consulting company founded in 2019 that over the years has supported more than 12,000 businesses in developing their operations and capabilities. Across thousands of customer conversations, one pain point has stood out again and again: strategy execution too often breaks down in the daily work of teams. That observation is where the idea for Suunta.ai began.
When ChatGPT became widely available in early 2023, it was immediately clear that this was not just another new technology or a passing trend. It signalled a far more fundamental shift in how work would be done. As large language models entered mainstream use, they were also being actively tested and discussed within the leadership team, and one thought quickly began to grow beneath the surface: this would not stop here. It was going to reshape knowledge work profoundly, and fast.
At the same time, as AI was beginning to transform knowledge work, the consulting industry was also being forced to re-examine itself. The models of expert work, leadership, and strategy work were all under pressure to evolve. At the intersection of these two shifts, the need for reinvention could no longer be ignored.
Looking back at the moment Suunta.ai was founded, two core ideas stand out in the background. The first was the belief that moments of disruption also create moments of renewal. The second was the conviction that, sometimes, a company must be willing to challenge its own core operations before someone else does.
In Matti Alahuhta’s book Leadership: Clear Direction and the Power of People, moments of disruption are seen above all as opportunities for renewal. The most significant opportunities in business often emerge when several shifts happen at once. In such moments, old operating models begin to give way, and competitiveness depends on the ability to recognise change before others do.
This connects naturally with Steve Jobs’s well-known idea of cannibalising your own business: a successful company must be willing to challenge its current model itself before the market does it on its behalf. True capacity for renewal is not only about reacting to change, but about having the courage to make bold moves, even when they disrupt the business as it exists today.
“This clear shift in the business environment, combined with the idea of cannibalising our own work, is what ultimately drove me to act,” says Kare Oja, developer of Suunta.ai, describing the moment just before the product was founded. “In 2023, I said out loud for the first time that during that year, I was going to build an application that would cannibalise our own consulting work.”
That was the moment when the vision for Suunta.ai began to take shape, and by spring 2024, the idea had evolved into a working product. After the first version was released, Suunta.ai began to find its place in practice. Its use expanded across industries and organisations, from Finnish engineering firms to international teams such as the City of Sherbrooke in Canada.
At the same time, there was an ongoing dialogue with customers and partners. These conversations did more than validate the idea, they also challenged it: where does Suunta.ai work best, where does it still fall short, and what is truly needed for strategy to translate into action? Along the way, the company gained broader visibility in the media and took part in growth, technology, and innovation events ranging from local Slush to Silicon Valley. At the same time, a clearer understanding was built of the market and of where Suunta.ai genuinely belongs within it.
Today, Suunta.ai is also involved in a broader international research initiative developing future solutions in collaboration with a range of partners. Even so, the journey is still only beginning. We are an ambitious team with a competitive product. That same ambition is reflected in our long-term vision: “From the very beginning, our goal has been a global market and tens of millions of users,” says CEO Matti-Petteri Pöntiö.
Suunta.ai’s ambition is rooted in the idea that the problem it addresses is both universal and critical. Nearly every organisation struggles with the same question: how can strategy execution become visible in everyday choices, priorities, and actions? If this challenge can be solved in a way that is both clear and indispensable, the impact will not be limited to a single tool. Instead, it will reshape the way strategy work is done. Suunta.ai has already found its place among the teams and leadership of several pioneering organisations, and its goal is to become a general cornerstone of leadership and strategy execution.
