Why  AlihankintaHEAT will be held in connection to the Alihankinta trade fair in Tampere? For a simple reason: everyone comes to this trade fair, which makes it the perfect opportunity to boost your business! Our traditional, strong business sectors alone no longer bring enough jobs and well-being to Finland. We need new kinds of innovations and they are not made in dusty offices. They are created together with creative people. And there are plenty of creative people at the trade fair.

In recent years, it has become clear in business life that competitiveness in the future is increasingly built on the combination of different fields. The growth areas of business are between the different sectors. They solve the big challenges of mankind, such as climate change or the challenges brought on by ageing population. Fashionable keywords today are carbon-neutral society, smart city, renewable energy, circular economy, platform economy, ubiquitous society, and resource-efficient country. Fashionable words often mean new business.

Luckily, Finland is already making some reforms. Forest industry of today, for example, is more and more often bioeconomy, which is the combination of forestry and the chemical industry. Without competence in chemistry, bio-fuels could not be made. Without strong, traditional know-how of forestry, wood could not have been transformed into transport fuel. Without the rapid growth of environmental awareness, we would not be this interested in renewable energy.

The circular economy model challenges companies in the technological sector to adopt business models that rely on services instead of products. In the circular economy, product loss has been minimised and added value is created for the products through services and smart functions. As the products are returned, companies can learn valuable information about their durability and usability while also receiving the components and materials for reproduction. Apparently, Ponsse is already buying back all the machines it has sold.

New kinds of value networks are also created around smart electricity networks. For example, introduction of electric vehicles is not only linked to the development work and customer marketing of electric cars. It is also dependent on the development of battery technology and the charging stations of electric cars. The development of charging stations requires functional smart electricity networks and the improvement of service business concepts. This means that there is an entire business ecosystem surrounding electric cars. As the spearhead country of smart networks, Finland offers an excellent opportunity to test also these new concepts.

In order to come true the aforementioned ideas, for example, require many kinds of different competences and insights – and putting all these creators into one place: HEAT. Luckily, Finland seems to be a country full of innovators! In Finland, more patents are approved per capita than anywhere else in the world. Lately, I have visited several Finnish start-ups. One has invented a second generation Pokémon game for educational purposes and the other a completely new metal material. A third company has managed to create an affordable navigator for a motorcycle visor. This country is full of propeller heads.

Through the Alihankinta trade fair, we want to bring the inventors and industry experts together and help them create something new. Not everything can be built in a day, but a spark for change has plenty of time to ignite in Tampere. Industrial operators share their challenges and the propeller heads solve them. Start-up companies present their new ideas in order to look for a new tempo for cooperation. It is not just about technical innovations; new business ideas are just as important. Now is the time to stay open-minded and fully alert. Even an idea that now feels insignificant can become a business worth billions in a few years.

Harri Jaskari
Member of parliament
National Coalition Party

AlihankintaHEAT event is held in connection to Alihankinta trade fair in the Tampere Exhibition and Sports Centre on Wednesday 28 September 2016. Further information and tickets: www.finlandevents.fi/alihankintaheat

Author:
Harri Jaskari is a Member of Parliament from the National Coalition Party and a board member of Rapid Action Group Oy (RAG).  RAG and the Tampere Trade Fairs’ event unit Finland Events will hold AlihankintaHeat in cooperation with each other. Further information: www.finlandevents.fi/alihankintaheat