Oulu: The Silicon Valley of Finland?
The small city has recently become a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship. I got to meet with various organizations in its universities key to this transformation.
Helsinki, Finland. Day 40.
Oulu is the self-proclaimed capital of Northern Scandinavia. The Finnish government’s Regional Capital Investment Strategy has been focused on transforming this small city into a leading tech startup hub through attractive tax breaks and other incentives. This wasn’t exactly apparent as I walked through the somewhat desolate city center, but as I wandered its winding university halls, I could immediately tell there was a thriving culture of innovation. There were collaboration spaces, professors riding electric scooters, Fab Labs, and cafés in every direction.
To understand Oulu’s development, we have to go back to the 1990s when Nokia set up its research and development center. This was a huge boost to the city of 190,000 and Nokia quickly became its biggest employer. But in 2011 when Microsoft bought the once-dominant mobile phone business, approximately 4,500 jobs were lost. This could have meant devastation for the small Finnish city, but quite rapidly they realized this could be the start of a new beginning. There was a surplus of ICT talent that could be used to create products and start new businesses.
In response, the universities began forming entrepreneurial centers. In 2012, Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OAMK) created a GameLAB and in the following years established the DevLAB and EduLAB. The former focuses on the development of concepts and products in health, wellbeing, environment, and technology, while the latter supports the creation of prototypes, products, and startups targeting the global EdTech industry. I was lucky enough to sit down with the EduLAB “master,” Blair Stevenson. In addition to expanding the internationally renowned lab, Blair has a teacher, management, and strategic development role at the School of Professional Teacher Education.
The EduLAB is unique in that it’s a full-time, semester-long program taught in english. This is all the students focus on for four months. The program works with local organizations — often schools — to identity problems or areas for innovation and interdisciplinary teams are created to work towards a solution. This might include a team of graphic design, engineering, marketing, programming, and education students. The team assigns roles and learns from each other during the process. The first six weeks are about developing the concept, during which, some teams will get cut. Those students whose teams didn’t make it are then assigned roles in teams that moved on. The remaining part of the semester is about testing the idea through rapid prototyping in environments where the product would function. Those who have completed this semester program can then continue on to an additional four-month program where teams further develop their ideas, aiming for a finished product or service and a start-up.
During the day prior at the University of Oulu, I started off the day by meeting with Matthew, a facilitator of a similar program, Demola. We chatted in the university’s lively “Innovation Arena,” where there were community and co-working spaces, cafés, and an accelerator. Demola is an international learning environment and innovation platform that facilitates multidisciplinary co-creation projects. They bring together leading companies and millennial from their alliance universities to work towards solving a problem the company has identified. For instance, I found one project that was posted by a community building organization called Hartela. They’re designing a smart neighborhood filled with 500 new apartments in Oulu. Here’s their dilemma:
The main focus of this project should be on finding and understanding what kind of guidance, support processes and methods would make a “smart neighborhood” a more attractive place to live. How and what kind of methods, tools, material, services, etc. would enhance the skills of the individual residents and the whole community to create a “smart and attractive neighborhood.”
Students, companies, and a Demola facilitator meet at least once a week together for eight weeks to work towards an answer. In a process similar to, but more secretive than EduLAB, Demola uses a mix of design thinking, scenario approach, and demo-building.
Later in the day I got to chat with Eemeli, president of Oulu Entrepreneurial Society — a student-run organization that promotes entrepreneurial spirit, working life skills, and the creation of new businesses in Oulu. Eemeli was careful to point out that their conception of entrepreneurship isn’t just about starting a company, it’s about thinking in new, creative, and innovative ways. They organize events such as startup weekends or pub crawls taking place in offices throughout Oulu, but my favorite program was the recently developed Human Accelerator. Over the course of two months, there are eight workshops dedicated to developing relevant work-life skills. With topics ranging from goal setting to strength recognition to physical wellbeing, the workshops have brought in diverse crowds as these skills are important to any being looking to grow.
As I learned about these programs, I kept trying to apply their processes to a K-12 environment. The only difference in my mind is that kids at younger ages generally have a weaker sense of their interests and purpose — although it can be argued that they are more creative. This can make entrepreneurship seem daunting because it’s hard to build a product or business when you don’t know what you’re passionate about. With this in mind and given my interest in the development of personal identity, I asked how entrepreneurship could help kids better understand their passions. Matthew, from Demola, thought that maker spaces were important and that by being forced to build things, you inevitably learn about what you do and don’t like. Blair, from EduLAB, mentioned that by having kids practice different roles in a business, they come to better understand themselves. Perhaps they love their role, or perhaps they envy the responsibility that another teammate held — either way, it’s valuable to self-understanding.
In a future where 65 percent of children entering primary school today may work in jobs that don’t yet exist, the mind and skillsets developed in these programs will become increasingly essential. We need to create more opportunities for kids to “do” and to experiment without repercussions for failure. But if we reserve these type of programs for privileged university students, then we risk squandering innovation and adaptability in a generation where these traits will be prerequisites to thriving in an incredibly complex and ever-changing world. As Ken Robinson famously puts it, “we are educating people out of their creative capacities.” Oulu is not — at least at the university level. In the long-run, they were probably better off for the collapse of Nokia as the ICT industry became diversified and as it built a culture of innovation. This was largely enabled by shifting the priorities in its education institutions through the cultivation of entrepreneurial centers. More schools need to be willing to change their norms to develop 21st century skills and these entrepreneurial programs serve as an example for doing so.
Please like this post if you enjoyed the read, leave a comment if you have any thoughts, and share it with others who may be interested in this newsletter’s content.
Peace & Love,
Joe