Creating impact together: Industrial companies and higher education institutions speed up innovation processes
Higher education institutions are impact creators. “Defining impact is complex though and the uncertainty relating to impact comes from the complexity”, says Kirsi Viskari, Vice President of Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), during InnoHEIs' peer review.
“We often think about from inside out; we do things in RDI projects and then measure what we have done. Instead, we should focus more on the perspective from outside in. The external society is mainly interested in the results we provide. We create outcome as graduates, new knowledge and businesses. We should focus on how our students use the skills we provide them when they enter the working life. That’s the impact”, she emphasises.
Viskari describes the society as a platform.
“Universities support the platform. We should have a proactive approach and build in more agility in our organisations, promote culture which allows trial and error, accept mistakes and learn from them. We should be open in our decision-making, communications, research work and education with our students, partners, society and companies.”
Towards impact via interaction – people create the societal impact
Viskari underlines that interaction is crucial; innovations happen when different disciplines meet.
“We create the impact together with others. To interact we should create stories that offer more powerful understanding. And we should always focus on people; who are we doing things for? How can we reach and engage them and learn together?”
According to Pauli Kuosmanen, Director of Innovation Services and Partnerships from Tampere University, the main problem in measuring impact is causality.
“Naturally, it is not at all clear which impact can be attributed to which cause. When discussing societal impact and timing of impact measurement, it is even more difficult. If measurement is done too early, it will emphasise that research and education yield only short-term benefits and hence ignore potential long-term impacts that can be more valuable”, he says.
Development Manager Hanna-Greta Puurtinen from TAMK reminds that the longer perspective we take, the more complicated it is to assess the causalities. “However, being difficult shouldn’t keep us from doing it”, she concludes.
Regional levels foster ecosystem building
Policymakers play a vital role in enhancing RDI activities. The Council of Tampere Region is a catalyst, implementor and financier at the regional level. Deputy Region Mayor Päivi Myllykangas emphasises the importance of regional RDI policies and encourages sustainable collaboration between research, business and industry.
She underlines the importance of interdependence.
“To avoid an impact gap, we need to understand the scope of the challenge and to find smart ways to inspire cooperation. The challenges are often extensive. The direction we are now heading is a mission-oriented innovation policy, shifting the system instead of solving single problems.”
Considerable increase in national RDI activities
The Finnish national roadmap for RDI defines the key targets. Strategic focus areas of the RDI roadmap are competencies, a new partnership model and innovative public sector. Funding and services, growth engines and agreements between the state and cities speed up the innovation ecosystems.
“Government’s target is to increase the intensity of RDI activities from the current 2.7 per cent to 4 per cent by 2030. We will link RDI activities to support renewal of the industry as well as public sector and services”, says Ministerial Adviser Pirjo Kutinlahti from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland.
According to Kutinlahti, the Finnish Flagship Programme provides a new, unique way of supporting high-quality research and increases the societal impact emerging from the research. Substantial, long-term funding is granted for ten large flagships, each operating in its own field.
Tampere Universities community has a high-quality research infrastructure
Tampere University and TAMK facilitate research, promote research collaboration, reinforce capacity and improve skills and competencies of private and public sector stakeholders.
“The infrastructure is seen as a customer-friendly service which is easily and openly accessible for all parties interested. Openness is crucial for future development of the university-industry collaboration”, says Director Anu Juslin from Tampere University Research Services.
During the past years a lot has already been achieved in Tampere region RDI activities. Co-operation within the regional intelligent machines and automation sector has tightened. Another great example of co-innovation is a new initiative, Sustainable Industry X.
”SIX is supercharging Finland’s industrial performance through innovation and knowledge. Our aim is to form a unifying agenda with industry, research and the public sector. SIX helps actors to form industry-driven clusters that promote innovation and competence development around different topics”, describes Harri Nieminen, Co-Creation Manager from VTT Technical Research Centre.
For companies and higher education institutions it is more worth than ever to cooperate at the national and international level and create sustainable impact together.
The InnoHEIs project aims at improving research and innovation infrastructure performance from fragmented to integrated and sustainable cooperation. The project enlarges the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) and their research and innovation infrastructure. The InnoHEIs project is funded by Interreg Europe.
https://projects.tuni.fi/innoheis/
https://www.interregeurope.eu/innoheis/
More information on the InnoHEIs project:
Hanna-Greta Puurtinen
Development Manager, RDI Services
Tampere University of Applied Sciences
hanna-greta.puurtinen [at] tuni.fi
Photo: Visit Tampere, Laura Vanzo
Text: Hanna Ylli
