Happy New Year Urbantechers!
Urban Tech Helsinki is starting its fifth year. The goal of the project has been for Urban Tech Helsinki to turn fresh innovations into successful, growth-oriented international businesses while helping cities in their sustainability transformation. This is the work the incubator will continue. The main events in the first half of 2025 are the start of 10 new startups in the program, the Smart Business, Big Impact initiative with our partners, and the Creatives x Tech X City process about to kick off.
Urban Tech Helsinki will also conduct an impact assessment at the beginning of the year, so we will have more news on what has been achieved.
Networking Lunches will recommence again this year on the first Friday of February and on most months after that.
Stay tuned to what’s happening by following our LinkedIn, the news on our website, and the Aalto Startup Center event calendar.
Novel initiative to build collaboration between tech startups and creative industries
Urban Tech Helsinki is partnering with the City of Helsinki and the Digital Creative Industries and Beyond group project to foster collaboration between tech startups, the creative industry, and the city. The first concrete outcome is the CREATIVITY X TECH X CITY -event, a multidisciplinary business event aimed at raising awareness and showcasing the innovation potential of creative expertise as part of a broader RDI (Research, Development, and Innovation) ecosystem.
The event also serves as a kick-off for bold, cross-sectoral collaboration that transcends traditional industry boundaries. At the event, tailored challenges will be launched by cities and companies seeking to initiate R&D projects with creative industry businesses, as well as startups from the fields of science, art, and technology.
The challenges include the design and ideation of the world’s first Happiness Museum, AI in film making as well as using gaming platforms for communication.
More about the event and registration here!
Buy from startups to speed up sustainability change
KIRAHub, Proptech Finland, Kira Growth Programme, and Urban Tech Helsinki kickstarted the Smart Business, Big Impact -initiative just before the turn of the year. It will be in full swing in the first half of the year. The initiative has just confirmed the first event: a pitching event from startups to construction companies in late February. More about that when the content and form are further developed.
We are now looking for visionary cities, public organizations, and corporations to identify a project they want to make as impactful as possible with our startup ecosystem. So, if you are looking to gain a competitive advantage, learn lean adoption of clean technologies, and become more sustainable, contact our project manager, Eetu Helminen.
What is Smart Business, Big Impact?
For a small and growth-oriented business, customers are at the center of everything. In the built environment, technology solutions and sustainable services are often targeted toward large organizations, both public and private, which can sometimes make it difficult to establish customer relationships. The Smart Business, Big Impact initiative builds new practices that help startup collaboration. This will enable the adaptation of new technologies quicker than before.
This benefits startups, companies implementing sustainable solutions, and the entire Finnish society. For startups customers enable growth and eventually internationalization, while for larger companies they provide agile development of solutions for sustainability transitions and possibly new international business.
Society benefits from growing new and sustainable businesses as well as reduced emissions.
Concrete actions in the initiative
- Work through 3-7 concrete challenges in the built environment sector owned by cities, corporations, or other large stakeholders.
- The participants will create concrete ways to involve startups in creating and adopting sustainable solutions to enable their growth.
- Enable companies and cities to become more agile in development and to collaborate with the best startups.
- Draft a joint statement within the industry, committing to closer collaboration in the future and earmarking project funding for startup procurement.
- The lessons learned gathered to create a guide on how to work more effectively with startups in built environment development projects.
- Startup pitch events for industry players to learn about suitable new solutions.
Public sector partners can apply for Innovative public tendering funding from Business Finland.
For startups: stay tuned and start by answering our questionnaire here!
The spring batch 2025 starts January 15th
The biggest news for the first half of the year is the new batch. 10 new startups will begin in Urban Tech Helsinki in the second week of January. The 8-week intensive program will conclude with our traditional Winds of Change Event on March 4th, where the startups will meet the representatives of our partners. More info on the startups in the next few weeks.
While you are waiting to hear about the new invigorating innovations, please remind yourself of the autumn 2024 batch. Here are their introductions; the 9 incredible startups that are looking to change the world for the better!