The rate of setting up new companies and creating new jobs has decelerated on open innovation platforms. Activities are more heavily focused on innovation projects for existing companies and organisations rather than on the generating startups. This is indicated by the significant increase in the number of companies and projects associated with platform activities in 2014. But in the future, startups and new jobs are expected to increase, for example, through the recently launched New Factory Startup Program and the experts released by Microsoft.
The number of people working actively on innovation platforms multiplied from the year before. Working on platforms is becoming a familiar activity for most employees and students in Tampere Region. Cocreation-based open innovation platforms have grown into an integral part of the region's innovation environment.
Currently, systematic annual data about the innovation platform situation in Tampere has not been available, apart from New Factory activities (e.g. Demola, former Protomo and Suuntaamo, Startup Program, Incubator, Game Business Track). The attached snapshot of a variety of platforms is based on this data.
Observations of the developing platform field in Tampere and the international Demola network:
Currently, campus areas are facing the most intense heat in the platform field in Tampere (Kampusareena, Mediapolis, Kauppi campus). Innovation campuses are actively developing platform-based operating models. Development efforts for the district of Tesoma to become a platform for open innovation have been launched, similarly to the development of the TreStart model as a platform which supports occupational healthcare. The Startup Program, the most recent project from the New Factory, has also been activated.
Of the New Factory concepts developed in Tampere, Demola has, in recent years, expanded into becoming a nationally and internationally significant network. In the future, it is important that the international platform is utilised in the internationalisation processes of Tampere Region based companies and universities.
Collective building processes on platforms are becoming more and more significant parts of the innovation system for towns and regions. As R&D resources have decreased, there is a genuine need for more inexpensive and agile innovation processes. Openly participatory platforms support the solution of new innovation challenges, such as solutions to social questions, in a new way. What is more, the concept of experimental culture, which has been raised in social discussion in recent years, gives encouragement towards quick and bold experiments. This logic is being copied by open innovation platforms.
The development of innovation platforms reflects social megatrends. Platforms also prepare us for the future. In Tampere Region, platform development has also been sparked by megatrends and significant structural changes:
- New Factory and Demola: alternatives for corporate-based R&D activities and the immediate development requirements set by the Internet economy
- Mediapolis: digitisation of media production
- Ideaklinikka: reducing the costs of healthcare and wellbeing
- Kauppi campus: biotechnology
- Tesoma: challenges of suburbanisation
- ITS Factory: smart traffic
- TreStart: rapid structural changes in high-technology fields and the resulting increase in unemployment among academically educated workers
Open innovation platforms are being developed in the 6Aika Open Innovation Platforms project of the country's six largest cities. The three-year project was launched in early spring 2015. Themes involving the Tampere region in the development of platforms include the social innovation model for the district of Tesoma (City of Tampere), management tools and measurement (Tampere University and the Council of Tampere Region), and the innovation service voucher (Tredea).
Read more on the Tampere platform development site https://avoimetinnovaatioalustat.wordpress.com/ and at www.6Aika.fi.
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