Insights

Luc Jones of Antal Russia wrote in his recent publication: “Russia is not a country where you can just show up and make a quick buck – you need to be in it for the long term. Many have tried and failed, but even more have done extremely well in Russia.” Finnish-Russian economic co-operation has been intensively in the spotlight recently, as the growing Russian market offers plenty of business opportunities for Finnish companies. Though entering the Russian market requires careful planning, and it is vital to get expert advice.

The Tekes Functional Materials Programme has invested altogether 150 million euros to renew and strengthen the Finnish industry. The Programme coordinated by Dr. Markku Heino from Spinverse Oy has systematically built new competences and base for new global business. The results are promising: more than 100 patents, 200 publications, 14 new start-ups, and a set of emerging technologies developed in new areas like printed intelligence, renewable energy and biomedical applications.

The Final seminar of the Tekes Functional Materials programme coordinated by Spinverse gathered together close to 300 experts at The Circus, Helsinki, 11.12.13. The event arranged in a former rock club provided a cosy atmosphere for digesting the scientific novelties and technological result highlights provided by short and sharp presentations. A special session and exhibition focusing on “Coatings & manufacturing” showcased highlights regarding the theme. Exciting keynote speakers: Prof. Nasser Peyghambarian (holographic telepresence), Paul Kallmes (Strategic IP Management) and Kivi Sotamaa (Design & 3D manufacturing), a bunch of fresh result highlights from science and industry and a multi-disciplinary audience made it THE EVENT in the field. The “hard day’s night” culminated with an interactive networking session around demos, posters and live blues music – a great forum to build new ideas, multi-disciplinary co-operation and next steps to the future.

Many Finnish companies miss an opportunity to get EU funding because Finland lacks a national strategy to support this.

Column in Kauppalehti by Pekka Koponen 25.11.2013

Large corporations join Slush too!

The present year's Slush happening was a demonstration in force for Finland. 5000 people attended, 1000 companies, 100 billions worth of capital investors as well as domestic and foreign celebrities ranging from the President of Estonia to Miss Finland.

Innovation Mill commercializes large corporation’s unused innovations that are not within the core of their corporate strategy. The accelerator started as cooperation between Nokia, Tekes and Technopolis and during the four years of operation it has created 74 new companies and 650 new jobs.

Spinverse is organising the third international event integrating nano, materials and production technologies. It gives an outlook to European and global developments and showcases latest innovations in these fields. Industrial Technologies 2014 follows the success of the previous Industrial Technologies conferences in Brussels in 2010 and in Aarhus in 2012.

Resource scarcity is the new trend. We have e.g. too little clean water, energy, and rare raw materials. At the same time many resource side-flows from production are being thrown away or seen as waste. The mountains of garbage at the landfills are growing as we speak. Could your waste be my gold? Can this even be seen as a new underused business opportunity? According to the CTOSurvey2014, the respondents believe so.

The VALUE4NANO project started in September 2013 and aims at developing an implementation roadmap of 4 value chains and their target products. The roadmap will include business modelling and planning for a set of pilot lines and it will involve strategic industry and European stakeholders from research and innovation. The selected areas are:

Inefficient solid waste disposal is a huge global problem that has substantial deteriorating effect on our quality of life. The nasty consequences include emissions, hazardous effect on human health, environment pollution, health problems and land depletion.