The project, ending in July 2022, has achieved many of its’ goals thanks to active stakeholder representatives, underlined Project Manager Hanna-Greta Puurtinen from Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK).
“We listen carefully to our stakeholders and put a big value on companies’ standpoints. We promote both new research, development, and innovation environments as well as better exploitation and accessibility of the existing ones. Together, we can do a lot more locally, nationally, and internationally.”
European Commission sets targets to digital decade
Petri Räsänen, Innovation and Foresight Director from Council at Tampere Region, shed light on green and digital transition at the heart of EU policy. The vision is that the EU will provide businesses and people with the opportunity for a human-centric, sustainable, and prosperous digital future. To achieve this, the European Commission has formed a proposal for a path to a digital decade.
“Digital compass refines the objectives and metrics of digital skills and infrastructures, the use of corporate digital technologies and digitalisation of public services. Multinational projects play a key role in combining EU funding with investments from EU countries and private sector”, he said.
According to Räsänen, Pirkanmaa area will prepare an own digital compass by June this year.
“With this tool we can increase digital investments and cooperation as well as sharpen the profile of the region in relation to European and national objectives. We have good starting points for this through multiple projects.”
RDI infrastructure to unleash its’ full potential
Project team presented recent InnoHEIs activities.
“The development of RDI infrastructure and increasing the ability of RDI actors are our focal points. We spread the results with regional stakeholders. We have held two roadshows and there’s one more still to come”, Puurtinen outlined.
She noted that Covid-19 has partially watered-down international activities of the project, but many accomplishments have been possible also online. Even two new spin-off projects have started.
Council of Tampere Region’s Senior Officer Marja-Riitta Mattila-Nurmi described the progress of regional action plan.
“It is one of the main outputs of this project. We have received a lot of perspectives on it from our partners and stakeholders. We have now collected data on regional innovation infrastructure and visualized the results. Additionally, we will consider how regional financial instruments are able to support this work.”
Mattila-Nurmi’s colleague Jonna Hjelt summarized the ways that RDI units of large companies can promote companies’ strategies. She has examined the issue thoroughly in her doctoral thesis.
Infrastructure development and playbook work
TAMK’s industrial technology lecturers Petri Pohjola and Timo Rainio told about concrete results on the development work.
“We present the infrastructure with the help of infra mapping, 360 visualization, and demo videos. For the moment we are developing a service model and promoting TAMK’s Open Lab and FieldLab”, Pohjola said.
According to Rainio, there are many projects and pilots linked to manufacturing industries in Pirkanmaa region.
“Really good RDI environments can be found too. Best practices, openings, and service models are worked out through playbook work. The first version has already been done.”
Stakeholders presented various ideas on how to strengthen the development of RDI infrastructure. Project team grasped their point of views and further discussions will be initiated in the coming months.
More information:
Hanna-Greta Puurtinen
Tampere University of Applied Sciences
hanna-greta.puurtinen@tuni.fi
Marja-Riitta Mattila-Nurmi
The Council of Tampere Region
marja-riitta.mattila-nurmi@pirkanmaa.fi
Photo: Shutterstock
Text: Hanna Ylli