Yesterday the 8th Annual Conference of The Technopolicy Network started in Tampere, Finland. It promised to be an interesting event as experts and practitioners from all over the world gathered in one of the centers of Finnish ingenuity. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Open Innovation for Regional Development’ and the city of Tampere is full of excellent examples of best practices in this field.
To take full advantage of the local knowledge the three day event started with an Innovation Tour to some of the most exciting projects around town. The first stop was the Nokia Research Centre, where presentations by Nokia’s top researchers offered a peek into the future of handheld devices. The focus on Open Innovation projects has secured Nokia with an influx of new ideas and state of the art knowledge. Strong links between the company and Tampere’s three universities have resulted in over 1500 patents on an annual basis. This formula for success has also been applied in other regions, in collaboration with top universities such as MIT, Cambridge and Tsinghua University.
Next up was FinnMedi, a medical cluster and incubator which has had some amazing results over the last few years, not only through its innovations, but also because of its impact on the region. With its world leading research in bone regeneration from stem cells, they excel in ‘human spare parts’. As a result of FinnMedi’s development, average wages in the region have risen to one of the highest levels in Finland and the number of jobs has increased with over 30%. An excellent example how science based regional development can impact the economy. FinnMedi is growing fast; it has planned multiple expansions in the coming years, so its importance to the local economy and innovation ecosystem will only grow.
The third stop of the Innovation Tour was at Demola, part of New Factory. Nokia, local and regional governments, the universities and local businesses collaborate in this project to provide students with a stimulating and supportive environment for creativity and innovation. One of the highlights here was the summer program offered by Demola. Students can decide to spend their summer working as a team in Demola’s factory to create a concept and demo version of their product. Because of the talent this program attracts, several demos have already been patented and the students share the benefits this brings. New Factory is now looking to take its success abroad and plans to expand to 5 new locations in Europe and beyond by the year 2012.
The tour ended with a guided walk through the historic center of Tampere, which looks industrial because of its old factories. This is just a front however, as the the old industrial buildings have been redeveloped on the inside to house shops, clubs and restaurants. In between all these cultural offerings you find the offices and breeding grounds that make Tampere an innovative hotspot.
The final stop of the tour was the beautiful Tampere city hall where around 100 experts shared their thoughts on the day’s experiences. During the coming days they will exchange knowledge and ideas and start fruitful partnerships. With world class experts in innovation and regional development presenting best practices in Open Innovation for Regional Development, this conference promises to be very interesting and inspiring.
For more information on this event, The Technopolicy Network or any of the sites mentioned in this article, please contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
