Aiming for Tiger Leaps
The Finnish government aims to increase RDI investments from 3% to 4% of GDP by 2030. A new doctoral program, aiming to increase the number of PhDs in the workforce, is one of the measures implemented to reach this ambition. The new program, running from 2024 to 2027, will provide funding for 1,000 doctoral researchers who will have a three-year employment contract to complete their doctoral degree.
Finland’s ambition to become an international leader in the industrial transition necessitates the stronger integration of various innovation efforts, such as the Flagship and Veturi programs. The strong government support for intensified industry-research collaboration offers a unique opportunity to take collective capabilities and skills to a new level and to generate breakthrough innovations, new markets, and solutions.
Synocus’s proven track record in designing and executing development projects with companies makes us a strong partner for companies seeking to capitalize on the increased funding and the new opportunities available. With the help of the new doctoral program, Synocus can support companies in developing the capabilities needed to create offerings that respond to urgent market needs.
Building springboards for Tiger Leaps
In March, Synocus, together with Aalto University, organized a webinar engaging companies and researchers in dialogue on how to strengthen industry-research collaboration. Please see our website for more on the webinar.
Mikko Kosonen’s presentation on the potential of building a national viability advantage in selected industrial sectors offered a key input to the webinar. This would require focused public-private efforts to establish the institutional conditions for springboards to evolve as they did in the telecommunications sectors in the 1990s. Nokia then became the company making the tiger leap and took a world-leading position.
Based on the webinar, Synocus has continued discussions with companies and policymakers to evaluate how new springboards for tiger leaps could be established. These discussions have identified the need to both, ensure increased alignment across the innovation agendas of the leading companies and their Veturi roadmaps and to accelerate the commercialization of university-based research. The new initiative, Aiming for Tiger Leaps, will focus on both these objectives by working around focus areas that would attract and integrate the interests of Finnish innovation players to support the ambition to increase Finnish RDI investments from 3% to 4% of GDP by 2030.
Leaping in the right direction together
Synocus, in collaboration with MEX Finland and the World Alliance for Low Carbon Cities, is now inviting companies interested in co-creating the springboards facilitating future tiger leaps. We will enhance learning and intensify collaboration through process excellence, offering excellence, innovation excellence, and societal excellence. The core of realizing tiger leaps lies in joint offering development. Companies must be able to inspire and engage relevant partners, including policymakers, to create new markets and collaborative contexts that will be needed for successful tiger leaps.
Synocus is looking for partners who will offer strong ambitions for breakthrough innovations and complementary expertise, that will accelerate their transformation. Together with MEX Finland, we have identified energy transition and digitalization as highly relevant topics for manufacturing companies. In the World Alliance for Low Carbon Cities, climate neutrality and circular economy represent key focus areas when mobilizing springboards for tiger leaps.
Any company interested in taking part in the development of a common action plan around these springboard themes is encouraged to be in touch. Our ambition is for the new initiative to be genuinely collaborative so that we can create something together that will help Finland return to the growth path we so desperately need.
For manufacturing-related questions,
you can contact Niklas Koski
niklas.koski(at)synocus.com
Jussi Hulkkonen is the contact person regarding the
World Alliance for Low Carbon Cities
jussi.hulkkonen(at)synocus.com
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