The cities of Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa will continue their long-term cooperation to drive competitiveness and innovation activities in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
Important common themes to be strengthened through cooperation include
- smart and sustainable urban solutions
- well-being and health technology
- new learning environments and digital competence solutions.
The Helsinki Metropolitan Area has significant research and business activities related to well-being and health technology. The excellent education system and digital competence provide a strong basis for developing education technologies in schools, educational institutes and early childhood education. The cities’ low carbon and energy efficiency goals support the development of new mobility, construction and property use solutions.
The cities have clear needs to address these themes to which the expertise and innovations available and developed in the research and educational institutions and companies in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area can provide solutions.
Helsinki Metropolitan Area as the driving force behind national innovation work
The purpose of the cooperation between the cities is to strengthen the region’s competitiveness and role in providing environments for development and experimentation of innovations. The aim is to create competence, business and jobs, and make the Helsinki Metropolitan Area into an internationally acclaimed competence cluster that supports businesses in their growth. Lessons learned from the cooperation will be shared with other cities and municipalities both in Finland and internationally.
The cities play a crucial role in developing environments for development and experiments. A wide range of the cities’ services and customers are invited to participate in the innovation activities. The new solutions will address customer needs and the challenges of sustainable urban development, utilising and generating research data and supporting the companies’ product development. And successful companies create jobs.
Ecosystem agreement 2021–2027 seals the cooperation
The ecosystem agreement signed between the cities of Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa and the state seals the cooperation for the 2021–2027 period. Ecosystem agreements represent an example of Government efforts to make Finland the most effective environment for experiments and innovations in the world by 2030 through strategic allocation of research, development and innovation funding. The purpose of the agreements is to support globally competitive innovation ecosystems.
The cooperation seeks to promote the creation of attractive competence clusters and innovation environments and build connections between Finnish players and international research, development and innovation networks and value chains. The key means to achieve this objective include open business innovation platforms and environments for experiments, joint RDI projects with businesses and universities, innovative public procurement, exploitation of research results, new business ecosystems, promotion of innovation-driven entrepreneurship and strengthening competencies through the help of international experts.
The implementation of the agreement between the cities of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area and the state is funded by the European Regional Development Fund, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, the cities of Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa, other project promoters and the Helsinki-Uusimaa Regional Council.