Insights

The global outbreak of the COVID-19 virus closed schools worldwide and forced educators to discover distance learning solutions to keep up with the school curriculums. In March, a Finnish innovation consulting company Spinverse sponsored Koulu.me website to showcase Finnish edtech companies that offer free access to their solutions for the duration of the crisis. The campaign has been warmly welcomed by the participating companies, educators and educational organisations around the globe.

LuxTurrim5G ecosystem led by Spinverse and Nokia has recently gained outstanding traction by being awarded with honors in the Traficom 5G Innovation Competition. LuxTurrim5G is an intensive innovation ecosystem of 26 partners working closely together to tackle the critical challenges of urbanization through building the digital backbone for a smart city, which enables a multitude of necessary digital services.

“As the environment gets a breath of fresh air and the planet vibrates less from the world’s greatest unplanned experiment in physical movement, the internet is humming with activity that is accelerating the deployment of exponential technologies to solve critical challenges,” says Patrick Halford, Vice President for Key Digital Technologies at Spinverse. Here are some of his insights on converging business models.

European Working Group of Innovation Consultants (EWGIC) brings together innovation experts to exchange experience and best practice and promote professional development in EU research, development and innovation projects. Marie Latour, Pekka Koponen and Xavier Aubry are members of EWGIC and wrote an important plea to draw attention to the current situation, where COVID-19 crisis has led private investment in pre-market, high-risk start-ups dry up overnight. With no cash flow, the start-ups need support to stay afloat. The EIC Accelerator could be used to help them.

We cannot allow the current COVID-19 crisis stop innovation - let's carry on regardless! However, identifying the right funding and partners for innovations can be challenging with the increasing number of multi-disciplinary EU calls. There are still ways to navigate through the funding application jungle. To help you get started, we are arranging a webinar where we tell you about upcoming EU funding opportunities for sustainable industries and how you can find the right funding instruments using Spinbase.

Join our Spinbase webinar on May 5th, 2020 at 15.30-16.30 (Helsinki, UTC+3, EEST) to learn new ways to find EU funding opportunities and partners! 

Technical Research Center (VTT) experts in the European Commission Programmes team are specialised in scouting for suitable EU-funded calls to find funding for the VTT research projects. Isabel Pinto Seppä has worked on the challenging task to identify the suitable calls for VTT. She shares her experiences with Spinbase tool which she has found very helpful in fulfilling her tasks. 

This year, the jury consisting of leading Finnish technology influencers chose Sandvik’s Director for Research and Technology Development Jani Vilenius and Genelec R&D Director Aki Mäkivirta as the winners in the CTOs of the Year 2020 Awards. The award went to those technology leaders who had contributed to their company’s growth or innovativeness over the past year with their impressive work.

Europe is committed to be the first climate-neutral continent in the world and to reach this goal, the European Commission has published an extensive climate program known as the European Green Deal. The aim of this program is to update the central legislation and channel thousand billion euro as guarantees, loans and public venture capital into green technologies, sustainable solutions and new businesses. At best, this roadmap takes European industries as the forerunners in the quest for a greener world. 

To support teachers in their important educational work during the coronavirus pandemic, Spinverse launched Koulu.me portal, which showcases close to thirty Finnish edtech companies. These companies currently offer their apps free of charge to schools and other educational institutions worldwide. The campaign has been warmly welcomed by teachers who are currently struggling with many challenges in these exceptional times.

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak is closing schools worldwide and confines teachers and students at their homes for weeks. This challenging situation prompted a group of Finnish edtech companies to reach out a helping hand and provide free access to some of their pedagogical solutions well suited for distance learning.