Innovations accelerating the green transition, social innovations making people’s lives easier and pioneering practices – all this can arise when the business sector and universities join forces. Intensified collaboration also boosts Finland’s success in international arenas.
“Maybe the greatest opportunity of all is to succeed in global competition and support the export industry. These in turn will have a positive impact on the national economy and the wellbeing of Finnish people,” says Jouni Hirvonen, Vice-Rector for innovation, infrastructure and facilities at the University of Helsinki.
To this end, the University of Helsinki has now launched a new R&D Accelerator service. In the accelerator, businesses and researchers can identify potential precursors for collaboration and launch joint projects in one to two months. The aim is to ensure that the additional funding provided by the Act on Research and Development Funding in 2024–2030 (1092/2022) is used as efficiently as possible over the next years.
“After all, this is an enormous opportunity,” Hirvonen sums up.
The University of Helsinki is able to support businesses not only through its top-level research but also by offering a range of mutually supplementary perspectives from a variety of disciplines. Business challenges can be examined from the research perspective in both the humanities and the natural sciences.
“We offer almost all disciplines imaginable.”
Collaboration between businesses and researchers is important also because we need all the resources available to solve the major problems of our time, says Riikka Heikinheimo, Director in charge of innovations and skills at the Confederation of Finnish Industries. Finland also has an attractive opportunity in its hands.
If we build attractive beacons of expertise with effective cooperation, they will be visible to the world and increase Finland’s international weight.
In fact, she has a hopeful outlook on the collaboration between business life and universities. Even though collaboration has sometimes been challenging over the years, it can be rekindled. The main thing is to take a proactive attitude together – whether it requires the opening of legal knots or consideration of IPR issues.
“Judging by the feedback received for the pilot projects for doctoral programmes, I would conclude that there is more will to seek solutions than to stumble at obstacles,” says Heikinheimo.
According to Heikinheimo, the recipe for fruitful cooperation is simple: define goals, work as equal partners and ensure that projects present something to gain for both parties. For businesses, it may mean, for example, means to increase turnover, and to researchers new ideas, among other things.
“It may result in an entirely new kind of academic research branch or question.”
According to Heikinheimo, launching ambitious projects requires long-term public RDI funding, which allows researchers to concentrate on their work and businesses to have the trust to start constructing, for example, leading ecosystems.
“Predictability is really important for both sides.”
The benefits of research collaboration have been noticed at the lift company KONE. Juha-Matti Kuusinen, Head of Digital Innovation at the company, says that universities provide an opportunity to easily test new ideas at an early stage.
Collaboration makes product development less risky. It encourages development efforts, thus increasing the number of innovations in the long term.
Researchers at the University of Helsinki provide KONE with information on the latest technologies and trends. This helps the company to perceive application opportunities and envision future products. Researchers also provide tips on how to do things even better.
“We may have a preliminary idea on the functionality of some product but lack understanding of how to implement it. This is something researchers can often help us in,” says Kuusinen.
Currently, KONE is engaged with the University of Helsinki in promoting, for example, sustainable urbanisation. This aims to create innovative digital services that can anticipate the movement of people flows and consequently make building use more effective while preventing congestion.
Kuusinen considers joint projects between businesses and researchers important because they help create new jobs and enterprises. At the same time, they increase Finland’s attractiveness to top talent and investors – but that’s not all.
“Collaboration is also important because it inspires both researchers and employees of businesses.”