Collaboration blog: All good challenges have Solutions
Written by Pirjo Koskiniemi
If a company or team has a problem they are unable to solve on their own, widening their field of vision is always a good idea. One option is challenging external parties to solve the issue: companies, students, customers, researchers, job applicants, residents or other people full of ideas. We want BusinessOulu to be able to offer this opportunity based around open innovation principles to all companies.
Everyday pioneering
Cities and their development organisations provide services for companies in a variety of ways, which means those offering the services and how they are implemented vary between cities. The joint Ecosystems of Growth project, run by the six largest cities in Finland, involves the development of new services for companies. Alongside ‘traditional’ corporate services, all kinds of new innovation and growth services are being produced, which aim not only to predict what the future will bring, but also to involve different parties in development work. For example, the experimentation platforms produced by the six cities offer companies genuine environments and the right users to test their products or services. BusinessAsema, a meeting point for people and businesses in Oulu, also serves as a smart property trial platform.
One element of Oulu innovation and growth services is challenge-centric events. One party opens up their development target in the form of a challenge, and problem solvers are brought in around it. How can we make travel more comfortable at an airport? What do travellers think? How can we encourage school children to be more active? Would they be interested in a treasure hunt at breaktime? How does data make cleaners’ everyday work easier? How can we guide customers at a waste management centre?
BusinessOulu is not alone in producing services in Oulu. Whilst we offer a large range of services all under one roof, we also work with both universities and universities of applied sciences. Working together at grassroots level with a pleasant and enthusiastic team is the easiest route to success. We could go as far as to say that working with Oulu residents even in an ordinary, everyday way makes us a pioneer among cities.
Online and on the road
Companies can find it difficult to get their bearings amidst the jungle of innovation services and environments out there. Plenty of locations and events are on offer, but they do not form clear pathways on which companies can progress. Service providers sometimes also find it difficult to describe their own service and position it at the right stage of the company’s innovation process. In practice, many services are events to which participants are invited, and which more or less compete for the same participants. Assessing the quality of one-off events in advance is tricky for those considering participating.
One solution is to bring together different events and make them into a recurring concept. Naturally, as we’re in Oulu, the name for our answer to this issue was obvious: sOULUtions. sOULUtions is a tightly packed few days during which students are guided in developing new ideas and finding solutions to challenges posed. For the city, sOULUtions is a fantastic way to find university of applied sciences students to solve challenges posed by companies, or even the City or research groups. Similarly, students get the opportunity to tackle real-life cases, with real-life benefits and problems. As a recurring event concept, and one that can therefore be developed, sOULUtions creates predictability and quality.
Embracing the same sOULUtions spirit, the UX Challenge event was held recently in Oulu, run by a European network of innovation service providers. The student teams solved the usability challenges facing the digital products of eight companies. The Covid-19 pandemic required the event to be held online. Despite some pre-event stress, even the prototyping and user testing went excellently.
Thanks to the pandemic, the distances between cities were far shorter. However, the hope remains that it will be possible to return to in-person events in the future. The real-life coffee table and atmosphere simply cannot be replicated online.
Pirjo Koskiniemi
BusinessOulu
Pirjo Koskiniemi is responsible of the open innovations services at the BusinessOulu. She is an avid developer of idea-to-experiment concepts. She is also the project manager of the Oulu sub-implementation of the 6Aika - Growth Ecosystems project.