Smart Partner Campus News Flash 1/2020

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Co-creation and innovation together with partners and stakeholders are an important part of the soon-to-be-built Smart Technology Hub in Vaskiluoto. The Hub will therefore consist of a Smart Partner Campus – a place to collaborate and ideate.

A flexible innovation platform called the Smart Partner Campus is being built as part of the Smart Technology Hub in Vaasa. The Smart Partner Campus is an open and inspiring collaboration environment for innovation that promotes new ways of working and thinking outside the box. The Smart Partner Campus focuses on doing research and product development together with companies, start-ups and academia.

The Smart Partner Campus is a hub for co-creation and collaboration where creating business and customer value is at the forefront. No man is an island – together we can address challenges we wouldn’t be able to address alone. The world is facing increasingly complex challenges. We can solve these challenges through expanding our competences and working together.

The Smart Partner Campus Partners

In November 2018, Wärtsilä presented an invitation to companies and researchers within the industry to join the development of an operating model for the Smart Partner Campus. The cooperation partnership raised a lot of interest both in Finland and abroad, and over 200 operators applied. The first partners selected as partners to the campus were: Danfoss, Demos Helsinki Oy, NLC Ferry Ab Oy, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, Vaasan Sähkö Oy and University of Vaasa.

The partners were announced during Energy Week in March and the event “The Smart Technology Hub – A Place for Co-creation and Collaboration” gathered almost 200 participants as one participant from every partner of the Smart Partner Campus got together in a panel discussion. The Smart Partner Campus network will continue to expand and more collaboration projects will be initiated. The partners are:

  • Danfoss
  • Demos Helsinki
  • NLC Ferry Ab
  • Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd
  • Vaasan Sähkö Oy
  • University of Vaasa

What has happened since the launch?

The first partners has enrolled on journey where they discover possible ways of working and common values. In 2019 the partners met in order to work on a Playbook together; a set of guidelines and a toolbox to help make innovation together easier.

The work started with mapping and scouting for common themes and synergies in strategies. Out of the common themes the partners started to work on their first common projects together and by that also testing and validating the common guidelines and ways of working. The first projects are discovering for example automated reporting possibilities and future fuels for cruises.

As a basis for the collaboration, the partners have together set out on the journey to develop an approach to simplify and accelerate multilateral cross-industry collaboration. To form a trusted environment, this group of partners has jointly developed mindset and values that will form the foundation of the future collaboration. Building on this foundation the work continues to develop an exemplary process and methods that aim at supporting the collaboration.