Insights

Spinverse is taking part in Slush - the hottest startup and tech event in the Nordics. It takes place on November 30th - December 1st, 2016 in Helsinki, Finland, with more than 17.000 attendees expected. Catch one of our experts to find your way to EU funding or navigate open Innovation ecosystems. Moreover, attend Slush side event: Smart Money from EIT RawMaterials on December 1st, where Catherine Bounsaythip of Spinverse will be talking about developing raw materials sector into a strategic strength for Europe.

Spinverse has recently opened a new office in Berlin, in the renowned Factory Berlin HQ - first and largest startup campus in Germany, located at Rheinsberger Str. 76/77. This new presence offers excellent connections within the network of innovators consisting of freelancers, startups from all possible stages and verticals, established corporations as well as investors and leading influencers from politics, science and society. Members of the community include SoundCloud, Uber and Twitter among others.

Technology Industries of Finland organised a workshop that discussed the opportunities of EU's Horizon 2020 programme. Spinverse experts Markku Heino and Pirjo Pasanen were invited to give a talk on the topic. In their talk they emphasized that a company must first have a viable business idea, which can be developed into a 100 M€ business.

Digital materials engineering concept executed by the industry-driven Dimecc Breakthrough Materials Doctoral School with its 37 doctoral students and tens of industry partners in the BSA and HYBRIDS programs aims to speed up R&D significantly.

Former Vice President of Intel Labs Europe and co-founder of the Innovation Value Institute, Martin Curley, who was speaking at the CTO Forum Finland in Helsinki on October the 13th, 2016, started off his address to the Finnish CTOs by saying that we live in a new era where the pace of innovation is a matter of survival.

Ian Roberts, CTO of Bühler and Michael Thiel, Chief Science Officer and Co-founder of Nanoscribe have been awarded with the title European Chief Technology Officer of the Year 2016 in their respective categories: large corporations and SMEs. The awards ceremony took place during the CTO Forum 2016 in Evonik Creavis GmbH, Marl, Germany on October 27^th, 2016. Both awardees serve as prominent role models fuelling growth and strengthening European innovation and technology leadership.

The term “Open Innovation” was originally coined in 2003, and refers to the paradigm where ideas pass between different organisations to create value. Since the 2010s innovation efforts have moved towards Open Innovation 2.0, where shared added value is created together with different actors in an ecosystem. According to Spinverse's latest CTO Survey, Finnish companies have acknowledged Open Innovation 2.0 and there is a willingness for its implementation. In practice the innovation efforts are still closer to the original principles of open innovation, rather than OI 2.0.

Spinverse Group has invested in 3DBear, a startup focusing on making 3D printing easy with their game, 3DBear, that runs on a tablet. A total of 120 000 euros was raised from London-based angel investor Glyn Eggar, along with Spinverse Group, as well as the former Director-General of Tekes Veli-Pekka Saarnivaara.

Spinverse is delighted to make known yet another customer success story: Finnish company IndoorAtlas secured Horizon2020 SME Instrument financing to scale-up and expand the disruptive geomagnetic indoor positioning technology delivered as a scalable cloud platform.

The European innovation and business environment is facing severe structural changes, requiring key players to continuously update strategies to maintain and foster competitiveness. Hence, a new breed of innovation is emerging. It exploits disruptive technologies to solve societal challenges sustainably and profitably by blurring the borders between research, industry and governments. It is called Open Innovation 2.0.