In a world increasingly obsessed with linear resumes and structured boundaries, Arto Sivonen moves like a self-directed piece of kinetic art. The influence strategist and co-founder of Common Ground never went to high school, let alone college. Yet today, he advises on sustainable transformation of global systems and lectures at prestigious academic institutions, including Finland’s Aalto University. Read this also Ukrainian woman shares differences between gym culture in India and Europe
His latest adventure? Helsinki Exchange – crowned continuously The world’s coolest, most structurally predictable and happiest capital – for a hyper-caffeinated, tech-fueled sensory kaleidoscope Bengaluru.
For Arto, who has lived in countries like South Korea, Kenya and South Africa, coming to India was not a shock but a clear investment in revolutionary development. “I knew India was one of the places in the world where I would learn the most and the fastest,” he said in an interview with HT Lifestyle. This resulted in a profound collision of two completely different worlds, forcing him to reevaluate his own world nordic Adapting against India’s fluid, community-driven landscape.
Sensory changes: distant silence towards ‘uncles and aunties’
To transition from Finland to India is to rethink how one occupies time and space. The paradox is not merely geographical; This is philosophical. “Finns live very far apart,” says Arto. “They don’t talk too much, they keep their space, they don’t touch each other. I respect that, it’s a big thing. In India, there are a lot of uncles and aunties – everything belongs to everyone. It’s the extreme,” he explains.
For a man who has spent his entire adult life navigating communal, co-living arrangements without ever feeling the need to step back, Bengaluru presented a surprisingly personal first: the urgent need for a closed door.
“I think India, for the first time in my life, made me, like, really, I need some space. For the first time in my life, I started paying more attention to my home, like, this is a place where I can relax and be quiet, and isolate myself for a while,” he admits. She further added, “This had never happened to me before India. It happened here and I feel like I need to do this because of all this noise and people around me.”
Yet, it is this lack of boundaries that gives rise to the social warmth that Arto finds conspicuously absent in the ultra-independent Nordics. When he returns to Finland, the silence is no longer merely peaceful – at times he can feel lonely.
“The thing I love in India, which I don’t have in Finland, is how people live and help each other together. I can always find a way to get along with others. The social skills are fantastic – at parties, talking to random people. In Finland, you can avoid people, so you don’t have to do that. That’s something I really miss when I go back to visit Finland,” he shared. Read this also ‘Leaving on time is normal’: Indian woman in Australia reveals 6 differences in workplace culture
Description of Silicon Valley with tractor on the road
As a strategist working at the intersection of human rights, design activism and climate action, Arto sees Bengaluru as a fascinating paradox. This is an online-first metropolis where citizens easily access everything through apps, yet the physical infrastructure operates on a completely different, sometimes fragmented timeline.
“It’s a mix of everything,” Arto said, highlighting the surreal juxtaposition that defines India’s tech capital. He adds, “In the context of a Finnish city (here) there are tractors almost everywhere. Structural things don’t work – electricity is off, there are potholes on the road. And at the same time, it’s super high-tech. People order everything online.”
This duality extends to the city’s corporate boardrooms, where high-level digital innovation co-exists seamlessly with unshakable cultural traditions. Even in the most luxurious tech parks, no day goes by without local anchors: a steel glass of frothy filter coffee and a crispy dosa.
While he appreciates Mumbai’s huge, high-end restaurant scene, Arto feels that Bengaluru’s culinary soul thrives on the simplicity of its streets: “The Southern Indian kitchen is very strong, and there are a lot of small places around the city, and they’re all really good. The better food is really on the streets.”
However, his eye for authentic design calls attention to a missed opportunity in the local scene: “What’s missing in Bengaluru restaurants are those great traditional spaces. There are some really nice places that look like modern Indian design – clean and nice. But too often, Bengaluru restaurants start copying ideas from Europe rather than creating something new from Bengaluru. Maybe that space is missing a bit.
The final global framework: equality, accuracy, ‘jugaad’
When asked to create an imaginary, ultimate framework for global problem-solving by extracting a core cultural characteristic from the countries he resided or visited, Arto devised a brilliant cross-continental formula from Finnish values, Japanese execution, and the Indian mindset.
He envisions a paradigm in which Finland lays the foundation for structural equality – an approach that fundamentally prioritizes human dignity and cuts through rigid social hierarchies. Japan infuses this mix with radical precision, providing a strong sense of discipline and mutual accountability for shared public spaces. Ultimately, India provided the necessary spark ‘Jugaad’ and multi-perspective thinking, a cognitive flexibility and resourcefulness that prevents people from simplifying complex problems too quickly and opens up infinite structural possibilities.
“Those three sound great,” Arto thinks, wondering how these different elements balance each other. He added, “Equality means you’re looking at people – the human first – and leaving the structural behind.”
Yet, he believes that it is India’s inherent ability to hold multiple truths simultaneously that the stoic West desperately needs to counter its own analytical paralysis. He says, “People in India see many potentials. They are working in many ways; they can think about things in many ways. The deep history, the spirituality, the way of life, the diversity – these things keep our minds open to possibilities. That is what India really is.”
“For example, when I go back to Finland, it’s a very simple country. Things are straightforward, clear and easy to do. But the downside is that people don’t see the possibilities. They only have yes or no answers – there’s only one right answer. It’s very different,” he explains.
The shadow side: the mirage of ‘surface-level’ stability
Arto’s admiration for India is not romantic or blind. Having spent decades confronting unethical models – he walked away from lucrative advertising agency roles in his 30s because ‘creative agencies will do anything for money’ – he is highly critical of how sustainability is packaged in developing markets compared to Europe.
For Arto, the biggest setback in India is the deep socio-economic divide. While Finland’s high ranking in the World Happiness Report is driven entirely by a baseline of equality, India operates in deep divergence. “The hardest thing from the Indian side – and I knew this was going to be – is the lack of equality,” he explains straight away.
He added, “How can you be sustainable if you need to find your food every day? If you don’t find it, it’s not what you’re thinking. The income gap, the inequality is huge. You need to find ways for everyone to benefit from sustainable living.” He also cautions against a growing culture of eco-performative behavior or ‘brainwashing’ within corporate and cultural elites, where sustainability is treated as an aesthetic badge rather than a systemic rewiring.
“Sometimes I’ve seen sustainability being used at various events just because it looks nice and cool. It’s not that people actually want to make a change. They use all these recycled plates at our events, and then you have meat on the plates – it doesn’t make sense. Or they only talk about some minor climate-related thing because people can’t talk about equality, equity or human beings. If the people running those events have the power to change their lives. If there is a need, they won’t do it, it’s just on the surface level,” explains Arto.
Disrupting silos from a borderless center
It was to bridge these gaps that Arto co-founded Common Ground with his Bengaluru-based partner, Anna Dias. Conceived over a few years and officially operationalized over the past five months in Bengaluru, the agency is designed to be a borderless, lean collective engineered to break international resonance.
“Next thing, I’m going to Helsinki to create a Finland office. Then I want us to be able to open Nairobi as well,” he said, sharing his blueprint for expansion. “It’s basically borderless. For me, it’s important to connect people around the world because so often they’re just working in their own silos. Europeans are really Eurocentric. Indians also often only think about India because it’s a superpower and they don’t need to do anything else. I I want to disturb people’s minds;
A large component of their future vision involves empowering the next generation of creative minds through design activism. Having taught at universities in different countries, his goal is to lift design students out of professional apathy. “I think I would like to help those young designers get on the scene. Once they graduate, the problem is that they don’t know enough about how they can use their skills for better purposes than just making a logo or another chair that we don’t need,” says Arto.
“Nobody is teaching them about it. I want to change that because I know how much power design has in this world. We should use it for better purposes,” he concludes.
