Insights

The main focus of more than 60 Spinverse experts is to innovate, ideate and challenge. This is why the company’s working environment called for inspirational spaces for innovation. Spinverse recently moved to Keilaniemi, Espoo, to larger premises and aimed to create an environment where employees can work in a variety of ways, meet colleagues and also celebrate success.

The year with corona made us think about our ways and places of working

Over the course of the challenging and exceptional year of 2020, Spinverse grew and recruited 15 new employees. The old premises became too small and expectations for a new office space were set high. Before, Spinverse had somewhat limited possibilities for remote working and employees had the opportunity to work remotely once a week. With the epidemic forcing everyone to adapt to the new normal, a different perspective on working was required. It became obvious that certain ways of working suited to some, and another way worked for others. There was a desire to enable different ways of working also at the office when people will finally be able to return there.

Working life is undergoing a big change and the premises need to change too. The role of the office is to serve employees and provide the best possible place to innovate and be inspired.

“Working life is undergoing a big change and the premises need to change too. The role of the office is to serve employees and provide the best possible place to innovate and be inspired. The office has all the necessary furniture and equipment so that each of us can succeed in our work. Best of all, at the office we will meet our wonderful colleagues,” says Laura Koponen, CEO of Spinverse.

For everyone to be able to work in the best way suited for them, Spinverse set the following requirements for the new premises:

• Small meeting rooms where you can innovate together with colleagues or arrange remote meetings
• A common “living room” where you can meet and enjoy each other's company
• Outside the actual work area, there will be a few more desks where you can stop to work temporarily
• Different seat options for workstations, with good ergonomics in mind
• Kitchen and an area for hanging out where you can also spend time outside working hours
• Functional and intact furniture from old premises will be brought into the new work environment.

Every employee is provided with the best environment for smooth working

Special attention was paid to the acoustics, colour scheme and ergonomics of the office. The interior design for the new office was designed to match the colors of the brand. Attention was also paid to the office’s walkways, and the office flooring was used to guide traffic from the entrance to the area where coats can be left. The soft carpet and upholstered furniture offer good acoustics in the open space.


“We have people of all ages and heights at work and everyone has their own needs for furniture. That is why we wanted to invest in workplace ergonomics and choose from a wide variety of different seats. This way, everyone can find the best seat for themselves. All our tables are electric so everyone can adjust the table to the right height,” says Laura.

Spinverse founder and Chairman of the board Pekka Koponen shared his thoughts about Finland's recovery and resilience plan. What opportunities does the recovery package offer especially for Finnish industries, and how can board members promote the growth opportunities of their companies from this perspective? Read here Pekka's expert advice to companies and their executives.

When funding calls open and the consortium gears kick into action, there is a lot of excitement mixed with uncertainty and risk. Consortiums do not come fully formed, and risk is not just isolated to new technologies or organisational challenges. It is a combination of both and also includes other factors, such as regulation, ability of organisations to collaborate, global phenomenon, ships getting stuck in major trade arteries and so on.  Spinverse's Patrick Halford, VP, Digital Industries discusses on how to manage consortium risk and how Spinverse can help. 

In an interview with Finnish newspaper Kauppalehti, Pekka and Laura Koponen talk about the present and future of Spinverse. All large companies in Finland know the consulting company founded by Pekka Koponen, even though Spinverse may not ring a bell to the general public. The company is a very well-known collaboration partner to various large and also small and mid-sized companies, as it has helped them gain over 500 M€ in EU-funded money for R&D&I. 

Last year was one of the busiest and most successful years to date for Spinverse. We welcomed many new colleagues, new customers and worked on exciting new projects. We are proud of our skilled colleagues who have worked so hard to help our customers and are delighted to share the latest news about promotions. What is more, warm welcome to our new colleagues in the Spinverse family.

Spinverse is one of the nine partners in the STARDUST project, launched in 2017, to create a miniaturised neurosurgical implant leading to a proof-of-concept for a new treatment approach for Parkinson’s disease. The four-year project has now progressed to its final year, coming a few steps closer to introduce novel ways to treat a wide variety of diseases.

Heli Teerenhovi joined Spinverse as Senior Manager less than two months ago and has already familiarised herself with some of Spinverse’s health technology projects and the opportunities brought by EU funding to innovative technologies. We discussed with Heli about the future of health technologies and how the new solutions will help provide patients and their care personnel with a more personalised and effective care.

LuxTurrim5G is developing and demonstrating a fast 5G network based on smart light poles with integrated antennas, base stations, sensors, cameras and other devices. This ecosystem project led by Nokia and facilitated by Spinverse opens new digital services and business opportunities for a real smart city. One of the companies providing solutions for the ecosystem is Orbis from Vantaa, Finland. They manufacture radio frequency and optical fibre assemblies and take care of the assembly and device integration for the smart light poles. Orbis has experienced tangible benefits in the commercialisation process of their technical solutions after having joined the consortium a year ago.

Spinverse team recently got together to shortly meet up with most of the colleagues face-to-face (keeping a safe distance). We wanted to raise a toast to this year’s successes and most of all, to our Consultant Vilja Vara, who reached a milestone of 10 years with Spinverse this autumn.

The European Association of Innovation Consultants (EAIC) was launched on 5 November 2020. What originally started as an informal working group in September 2019, was formalised by the members as an association that now gathers more than 40 members active across Europe. The aim is to foster the discussion on common interests with a possibility of future collaboration and actions. Founder of Spinverse, Pekka Koponen, was one of the founding members of the earlier working group and we are glad to see him elected as President of EIAC.

We are glad to introduce our newest experts to the growing family of Spinverse. Our new colleagues complement our already strong expert teams with their expertise on forestry, bioeconomy, advanced energy sources, forestry, EU policies, and health tech – all very hot sectors in today’s industry landscape. Meet Jyrki, Anna, Sonja, Heli, and Jayden.

In today’s rapidly changing world, very few organizations or people can make it alone. At best, orchestrated ecosystems built around companies can be strong drivers for growth and competitiveness but building and leading them can be tricky. A group of Spinverse ecosystem leaders recently rolled up their sleeves with Ulla Koivukoski for an interesting book project. The newly published Ecosystem Handbook offers fresh insights for engaging different people and organizations, to work better together to solve complex problems and grand challenges. The book gives practical help both for ecosystem leaders and all people working in them.

When our customers succeed, we succeed. So do our employees. The new promotions in the Sustainable Industries business unit are a result of relentless work in supporting our customers’ projects, big and small. Warm congratulations to our colleagues! This month, we also welcomed a new colleague in the Spinverse team!

In July, Spinverse Consultant Sonja Lätti defended her doctoral dissertation on the evolution of innovation and strategy processes at Aalto University School of Business, becoming the 14th holder of doctorate degree in our company. She presented her case study on the development of the people flow solutions at KONE between 2004-2015. The findings show how the efforts on both top and middle management levels are interconnected when driving change in a large organisation. We asked Sonja a few questions about her research and how she managed to combine work and scientific study.

In the midst of the pandemic, Spinverse welcomed several new colleagues onboard. Some of them started as permanent employees and some joined us for the summer. Between April and early June, we have onboarded a total of nine new colleagues at Spinverse with little or no face-to-face contact. How did it go?

New year – new challenges! Mikael Sundholm, Germain Courtois, Amir Moslemi and Patrick Halford all started year 2020 with new and exciting responsibilities by joining Spinverse. Let’s have a closer look.

Recent years have witnessed a steady growth in business and need for new experts at Spinverse. John Sperryn, Virpi Martikainen, Anssi Savisalo, Miguel Lopes, Aleksi Nieminen, Susanna Kiijärvi and Miisa Salmela are among the new team members who joined the ever growing Spinverse family in 2019.

The new year 2020 at Spinverse is off to a great start as we welcome new expertise to the management team. We are pleased to announce the hiring of Patrick Halford as of January 2020 to lead the Key Digital Technologies (KDT) business unit.

To be able to tackle major global challenges in various industry segments, Spinverse seeks to hire skilled experts from many different fields to meet the needs of the clients. Both new and current employees are empowered for personal and professional growth and continuous learning at Spinverse. Get to know some of the growth paths at Spinverse.

Spinverse helps to refine an innovation into business — we know where large companies are going to be in five years’ time. Laura Koponen, Managing Director and D.Sc. (tech) is proud of her incredibly brilliant employees. There are over 10 employees with doctorate degrees and people with solid experience from working at various technology companies, amounting to hundreds of years put together. Even though there is a good representation from industrial engineering and management at Spinverse, there are also a few economists and chemists: “We recently hired our first architect!”