About Osvald Bjelland

Osvald Bjelland  is an entrepreneur,  investor, business  developer and executive with a deep interest in people and planet positive growth.   What are the technologies, business models, partnerships and policy incentives we need to drive the energy transition at scale – a bit faster?  He has a special interest in the energy transition and frontier markets like India, Turkey and Africa. He is the founder and former Chairman and CEO of Xynteo, a successful global advisory company,  and several other companies.   He is married to Thorhild Widvey, former Norwegian politician who served as Minister of Culture and Minister of Petroleum. They have two sons.

Bjelland was born in 1960, he has been a visiting business fellow at Oxford University, a visiting scholar at Standford University and he holds a PhD from University of Leeds ( Thesis topic – The  role of leadership in deploying IT to transform information-intensive organisations) and an MBA from Henley Business School and a BA from Norwegian schools of management.

He has been a driving force behind multi- company coalitions and partnerships like Vikaasa in India ( Birla, Unilever, Shell, Cyient among partners), Europe Delivers (Santander, ABB, Shell, SAP,  DBSchenker among partners), the TATA Xynteo Exchange  ( chaired by chairman Tata Sons and Bjelland)  and the Leadership Vanguard and many others programs.  Under Bjellands leadership the companies he founded and led delivered  500+ projects over the last 20 years.

Bjelland steped down as chairman from Xynteo in year 2020, as CEO in 2021 and the majority share of Xynteo was  was sold to Leon Capital in Q1 2023.  In this process a ownership/partnership program was established for the Xynteo team and the Bjelland Family remains a 20% shareholder.

He also started and developed The Performance Group in 1987 wich was sold in 2000 to CVC.

His spare time passion is farming and  he loves spending time with family and friends in  the mountains  during summer and long winters, reading and listening to music.