Finland
Jan Vapaavuori
653,867 (2019)
Santtu von Bruun, Mikko Rusama
Anticipate and manage future challenges
Improve internal government operations
Help develop a vibrant economy
Dedicated funding
Dedicated innovation team
Culture of innovation in city
Support from outside city administration
Leadership from Mayor
Helsinki’s pilot project Maria 01, located in an old hospital campus and originally started as a community house for ambitious tech start-ups, has grown into one of the biggest innovation culture hubs in Northern Europe. The campus serves as a supercluster of collaboration and knowledge sharing for key players in the ecosystem such as start-ups, venture capital firms, and corporations. Maria 01 is a prime example of doing things differently: cutting through red tape and adopting a design and prototype mentality. Following its success, Maria 01 is expanding to a future campus of 70,000m2 by 2026.
Along with 50% of cities surveyed, Helsinki has an explicit innovation strategy. Similar to more than half of cities surveyed, Helsinki approaches innovation capacity both from a holistic/macro level, as well as in specific policy areas.
Environment and climate change: Helsinki is striving to become carbon neutral by 2035. The city is aiming to achieve this goal through a series of innovation methods such as implementing innovative procurement, organizing innovation challenges, developing new energy technologies, opening innovation districts, and building living labs to test urban solutions. Helsinki also focuses on new mobility solutions as they are closely linked to the achievement of the city's climate change goals.
Digital services: Helsinki is opening up large volumes of public data as open data- The city is also testing platforms for solutions regarding future of education and health care.
Situated at the Mayor’s Office, the Economic Development team has 25 staff while the Digital Innovation team has 20 staff. Almost all divisions have their own innovation team.
Taking risks or testing new ideas
Data-driven analytics/public data management
Engaging residents in new ways
Developing new solutions based on digital technologies
Organizational change within the municipality
Human-centered design
Rethinking your city’s approach to financing partnerships
Like 81% of cities surveyed, Helsinki has dedicated funding to support innovation capacity.
Helsinki’s funding for innovation capacity is generally used to invest in R&D labs, piloting platforms, start-up (pre-)incubation, tech community and cluster organization. Similar to 61% of participating cities in the 2020 survey, Helsinki's funding for innovation capacity is also directed towards training staff and building capacity*.
*"Training staff and building capacity" is not an option in the 2018 survey, while "Launching or sustaining a project" is not an option in the 2020 survey.
Helsinki has developed partnerships to promote innovation capacity with other public agencies, private firms, not-for-profit organizations, city residents/resident associations and with other cities (e.g. Horizon2020).
To improve data use, the city has also developed data partnerships with the private sector, regional institutions (e.g. hospitals, waste and water management, public transport agency), academia and think tanks, to collect and analyze data, as well as with other cities.