Espoo – leading a tide of systemic innovation
Espoo is the city that drives Finnish business and innovation. Espoo is birthplace of 50% of Finland's university-born startups, the catalyst of Finnish startup success and the backbone of the fastest growing urban area in the Nordics, boasting the highest share of children and youth in Finland, reflecting our commitment to nurturing the next generation of innovators. Unlike conventional cities with a central hub, Espoo thrives on a network that is spread out across different areas. This allows the city-as-a-service model to thrive wherever people are, making Espoo the perfect environment for innovation.
Engaging the Community
The city creates its city strategy The Espoo Story together with city employees, citizens, communities, and companies. It’s a tool through which Espoo have been illustrating its commitment to developing the city together as a community.
The city empowers its staff to drive significant innovation by acting as skilled facilitators who bring together various stakeholders and provide opportunities and spaces for experimentation. To integrate a citizen-centric approach, the city has created the Impact Leadership Programme together with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
The city runs cross-administrative programmes to encourage experimental initiatives while Mayor’s Innovation Competition offers a platform for idea development, collaboration, and recognition, making innovation a shared endeavour among city employees and local companies.
To ensure its staff have the skills to shape the future of the city, it has boosted its recruitment and onboarding processes with VR solutions. In the city library services, they have developed the Library Resource Planner (LIRP) to optimise staff resources and promote literacy. By leveraging cutting-edge technology, they ensure their team members are equipped to thrive in their dynamic environment.
Fostering Innovation
They are proud to serve as a testbed for novel solutions and practices, driven by the services, projects, and initiatives they create. Their landscape in Otaniemi is a vibrant hub, that brings together startups, students, researchers, and citizens to innovate for a better future.
Their collaborative HEVi Programme promotes sustainability and paves the way for innovative ventures across municipal boundaries. They have partnered with the Finland as Female Tech Founder Frontrunner International Accelerator Programme in 2023 to increase diversity and inclusion in tech sectors and support female and non-binary entrepreneurs. The city organisation co-finances and supports the student-run startup accelerator ecosystem and their non-profit actions.
They connect people within the ecosystem and startups with investors to ensure a thriving environment for innovation.
Their People are integral to the Innovation Ecosystem
They have restructured their organisational model to support innovations that benefit citizens, businesses, and public entities alike. They actively absorb the needs and ideas from people and integrate them back into their processes. The city-as-a-service model drives cultural transformation, addressing rapidly changing community needs. They are not just enablers; they roll up their sleeves and work hand in hand with others to drive forward their vision of a smarter, more innovative and future proof Espoo.
The backbone of Espoo’s innovation community is the strategic partnership between the City of Espoo, Aalto University, and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The strength lies in the deep tech sector, with key areas including microelectronics, semiconductors, 5G, sensors, quantum computing, and sustainable products and materials. Members of their organisation actively collaborate with Espoo innovation community on joint projects and experiments, engaging students, researchers, and academic courses adding value locally but to Europe as well.
They are striving for climate neutrality by 2030, supporting sustainable, energy-positive communities through projects like SPARCS. They use districts like Kera as test beds for smart city solutions, focusing on sustainable development and the circular economy. Their OPULI platform promotes clean transport via collaborative EV charging tests. They continuously encourage public testing of innovations, such as Nokia's Camera-as-a-Service and Hydrohex's swimming instruction tech. Additionally, they’ve developed the Luoti system to manage nature data, advancing ecological, social, and cultural sustainability.
Knowledge Sharing and Collaborative Learning in Espoo
To foster mutual growth and innovation, they actively engage in extensive knowledge-sharing and collaborative learning efforts. They continuously seek to integrate new ideas and practices from their community and international partners, such as:
- Engaging in city networks across Europe, promoting mutual learning and cooperation. Their involvement in the EU-funded Cities for Sustainable Governance URBACT network and the Eurocities working groups on Cultural Management and Innovation and Entrepreneurship highlights their commitment to driving European collaboration and innovation.
- Utilising their reversed mentoring programme that facilitates inclusive youth participation in decision-making processes that bridges the gap between policymakers and youth.
- Developing strong partnerships with cities like Kryvyi Rih in Ukraine. Their upper secondary schools are paired with the twin schools in Ukraine, fostering an environment of shared learning and cultural exchange.
- Their community-created strategy guides their actions. Key components include the Climate Neutral Espoo 2030 roadmap, the Nature-Wise Espoo roadmap to mitigate biodiversity loss, and The Digital Agenda. These frameworks involve citizens, the private sector, and the third sector in their transformation efforts.
They are committed
They have spearheaded a collaborative vision for the future. Their collective efforts have paved the way for radical multidisciplinary collaboration founded on trust, shared values, well-being, and low hierarchical structures.
What Espoo does require everyone to be on board. It helps that Finland is a trust-based society. One challenge in earning trust is that migrants may not always find digital public services inclusive or accessible. The Trust-M project is one example of how we seek to solve it. It aims to understand how to create trustworthy digital public services for migrants, and to pilot them. One main group addressed is migrant women, who are particularly vulnerable to segregation from the labour market.
They are tackling climate change head-on. Climate action unites Espoo’s entire ecosystem. Together, they are rapidly reducing their emissions, with groundbreaking projects like the world’s largest data centre heat recovery initiative. Espoo’s per capita CO2 emissions have decreased by 62% since 1990. The systemic transformation to climate neutrality is part of the European Mission for 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities.
The City of Espoo does not just foster innovation; they shape it, setting a benchmark for cities across Europe and beyond.
Find out more about Espoo’s innovation ecosystem.
Discover their innovative cases on their website.