More and more companies keep diversity and inclusion on their agenda, and it is indeed an important topic and initiative to embrace and develop. Do we understand the importance of diversity and what is behind it – is there actually more than meets the eye and how can companies benefit from in-depth diversity? Our Head of People and Culture Dijana Soininen delves deeper into the intricacies of this interesting topic.
CTO Forum 2022 was arranged in hybrid format in Espoo on 10th November, bringing together CTOs from various industries. The key theme of this autumn’s event was to discuss national long-term R&D planning and its impacts and implications to business and society. Following the workgroup discussions, Maija Lönnqvist from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment gave a keynote about the current state of the development of the national long-term R&D plan and the next steps of its drafting. What is more, the nomination period for the CTO of the Year 2023 and Innovation Professor of the Year 2023 was opened!
We at Spinverse thoroughly enjoyed doing our first webinar together with our Swedish colleagues from IMCG. Here are some takeaways from our knowledgeable experts on the funding opportunities and hot topics for 2023 and beyond.
After joining forces with the Swedish IMCG International in August, we are now very excited to launch our first webinar together and proud to introduce our knowledgeable speakers from Spinverse and IMCG. In the webinar, we will discuss the upcoming changes in the public funding landscape and share some of our learnings and insights in applying for public funding. Read more here and register to the webinar taking place on the 8th November 2022.
Our Health team and ICT & Electronics team are delighted to announce that Jeroen Pouwels and SangEun Park have recently joined Spinverse. Jeroen’s wide expertise on molecular life sciences and R&D experience in oncology, among others, will be a significant addition to the subject matter expertise for our customers in the health sector. The ICT & Electronics team is looking forward to SangEun’s contribution in supporting the customer projects in various administrative tasks to ensure everything runs smoothly.
“Transforming Healthcare by bringing together diverse sectors” is the key challenge that the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) aims to address to build a strong society. Digital technologies in mental health care, advanced therapies for rare diseases, and improving hospital care are among the topics underlined in for IHI’s forthcoming calls in 2023. As the healthcare systems are under more pressure than ever and many diseases still lack effective treatments, there is an urgent need for more innovative and integrated approaches.
In late spring 2022, the European Commission presented the REPowerEU to accelerate clean energy transition and increase Europe’s strategic autonomy in energy as a response for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In short, the plan proposes actions to save energy, produce European clean energy and diversify EU’s energy supplies. With Member States having agreed on their position, the plan takes a major step forward towards its approval and implementation.
Evolver Fund I has on 30 September 2022 acquired a controlling interest in Finnish innovation funding consultancy Spinverse Oy. Evolver joins Spinverse as growth partner and will continue to pursue international growth together with Spinverse management and personnel. Founder Pekka Koponen and CEO Laura Koponen remain significant shareholders, while Laura Koponen continues to lead the company as CEO and Pekka Koponen takes up the position as Vice-Chair. The management team together with senior personnel also make equity investments in the company. Spinverse is the Fund’s fifth investment.
Spinverse team recently got together to meet up at the office for an afterwork get-together. There were quite a few reasons to celebrate, but one of them was to raise a toast to our Bioeconomy team leader and Director Kaisu Leppänen, who reached a milestone of 10 years with Spinverse this autumn.
AGRIVI is an AgriTech company from Croatia, whose approach to solving the global food problem is through the digitalization of agriculture. The company was recently awarded by the European Innovation Council (EIC) with a grant of 1.15 M€, which will help them build an AI-driven agronomic adviser to support farms in meeting the EU compliance requirements for crop protection and food safety. Spinverse funding experts successfully supported the company in the highly competitive funding application process.