The city of Espoo is an innovation hub. Its startup and growth companies are naturally open to investments.
Espoo tech companies are already doing business or co-development with Estonians. The cooperation with Latvia and Lithuania is currently much less active and that could be boosted and improved.
There is an investment agency in Espoo – Espoo Marketing Oy, a local FDI agency which collaborates with capital area FDI agency Helsinki Business Hub Oy and Finpro/Invest in Finland.
Some of the startup ecosystem activities, such as SLUSH are arranged by student volunteers from the Otaniemi innovation campus in Espoo: www.slush.org. Espoo would be happy to share more information about it.
Espoo is searching for partners from the Baltic Sea Region interested in museum development. Espoo City Museum is soon opening a new museum on an island in the Espoo archipelago. The theme of the museum is archipelago and island culture. However, the focus will be on developing the museum into a sustainable and ecological institution, that in addition to offering traditional exhibitions and customer experiences also functions as a collaboration platform and testbed for residents and local operators. We are searching for partners interested in developing this type of next level museums, Museum as a Service, in Baltic Sea collaboration. Key areas in the collaboration could revolve also around the Baltic Sea and environmental issues, digitalization and participation. More information: Tiina Kasvi, tiina.kasvi@espoo.fi
As an increasingly diverse city, we are always interested in learning about best practices related to the integration of immigrants.Espoo has a goal of adopting English as one of the languages of services city wide. We’d be happy to benchmark other cities who have chosen same kind of strategy to integrate recent immigrants and to attract foreign companies to locate in Espoo.
Espoo is a top performer in sustainability, a survey conducted for the Dutch EU presidency in 2016 found Espoo to be the most sustainable city in Europe (measured on economic, socio-cultural and ecological sustainability). We’re currently starting to plan integrating Sustainable Development Goals into the city strategy, communications and evaluation matrixes and would be happy to network with other European cities who have same kind of plans.
More information: Milla Ovaska, milla.ovaska@espoo.fi