Four new lead themes will start building national cooperation
The four new lead themes of the Innovative Cities will start their operations at the beginning of 2025.
National expertise and cooperation will be promoted in the themes of water expertise, wellness tourism, the metaverse, and food exports.
– National cooperation is important to gather internationally interesting expertise and activities from all over Finland. According to the recent interim evaluation of the Innovative Cities, the lead themes bring added value to the cooperation between cities. Promising experiences have already been gained from ongoing flagship projects, such as sports business and green electrification, says Mika Pikkarainen, Senior Advisor at the Ministry of Employment and the Economy.
The lead theme for the innovation cluster of wellness and nature experience tourism will form a national innovation cluster for cities, universities, research institutes, and companies. The goal is to create a foundation for broad cooperation, develop companies’ RDI expertise and multi-location service offerings, and provide companies and municipalities with information and examples of ways to increase responsible tourism. Business Rovaniemi will implement the project together with LAB University of Applied Sciences, Lapland University of Applied Sciences, and the University of Lapland.
The metaverse ead theme will form a city network to complement Business Finland’s business-oriented network. The project’s goal is to identify how cities could better utilize metaverses. The aim is also to join European networks, find good practices, and produce national standardization for the development of metaverses. The project will be implemented by the City of Oulu together with the University of Oulu and the University of Applied Sciences, as well as the City of Espoo. Tampere is also involved in the cooperation.
The food export lead theme will build a network between cities and regions with a strong food sector. The task is to identify and highlight the expertise and development platforms of different regions and develop closer cooperation. In addition, the project supports companies in the sector in their export-oriented development work and increases cooperation in international RDI networks. The project will be implemented by Into Seinäjoki together with the City of Vantaa, LAB University of Applied Sciences, the University of Turku, Savonia University of Applied Sciences, and Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences.
The water expertise lead theme will develop joint innovation activities, digitalization, and international visibility in the water sector for cities. The theme brings together the ecosystem activities of the cities of Kuopio, Oulu, and Kajaani. The flagship project will be implemented by Savonia University of Applied Sciences and the University of Oulu.
More info
Tiina Ramstedt-Sen
tiina.ramstedt-sen@pirkanmaa.fi
