Meet Riku Antikainen

What intrigued Riku Antikainen most was the chance to work in shaping a new company. So says GROW Participant Antikainen, 33, who for three months is exchanging MTV Media and work on the Finnish company's website technology for Bink, the cross-company digital initiative in Sweden. "The business idea behind Bink seemed ambitious and I was curious how it would actually be implemented," he says.

So far, Antikainen has been busy, helping as Bink migrates websites and web sales from different companies to a common platform. "I work as a project manager and my current assignment is developing the upcoming platform templates for Bonnier Tidskrifter websites," he says. And he appreciates the newness of everything. "Everything is new from workstations -the environment - to practices. My home office has evolved every year of course, but the introduction to a completely new environment has been exciting."

Not that the exchange hasn't been without its challenges. Antikainen misses the stronger sauna culture of Finland. "I don't know how Swedes manage the winter without it, and that, by the way is how we Finns cope with the cold!" he says. And it took him a while to figure out that Swedes maybe weren't as cold as he'd first thought. "The heating in my apartment didn't work properly, but I waited two weeks before calling the janitor because I just thought Swedes just liked it chilly like the British!"

Antikainen recommends that everyone try the experience of living and working abroad - a change of scene was another reason he applied for GROW. It's given him both a chance to have a travel, living and working experience all in one. "I will miss my GROW fellows," he says. "We have had so much fun wondering around Stockholm pretending to be tourists."