Oulu Inno­va­tion Alliance Col­lab­o­ra­tion Accel­er­ates Sus­tain­able Growth and a Renews Busi­ness Sec­tor in the North

Green hydro­gen, new bat­tery tech­nolo­gies, renew­able ener­gy, and cir­cu­lar economy—these are just a few of the hot top­ics being devel­oped in the Oulu region and North­ern Ostro­both­nia through cut­ting-edge research, the busi­ness sec­tor, and swift col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The Oulu Inno­va­tion Alliance (OIA), a col­lab­o­ra­tion net­work estab­lished in 2009 by the region’s major research, devel­op­ment, and inno­va­tion orga­ni­za­tions, has been prepar­ing, plan­ning, and assem­bling eight devel­op­ment pro­gram pack­ages since the end of 2022. Fund­ing for these pro­grams has been sought from the North­ern Ostro­both­nia Region­al Devel­op­ment Fund, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Just Tran­si­tion Fund (JTF).

The oper­a­tional streer­ing group, dri­ving OIA’s activ­i­ties and led by Deputy Rec­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, Arto Maa­ni­nen in late autumn 2022, appoint­ed and tasked alliance part­ners’ experts to lead JTF pro­gram prepa­ra­tions for the select­ed themes: green hydro­gen, new bat­tery tech­nolo­gies, cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and renew­able ener­gy, start­up ecosys­tem, green ICT (lat­er renamed the Autonomous Vehi­cle Devel­op­ment Plat­form pro­gram dur­ing prepa­ra­tion), com­pe­tence, as well as research, devel­op­ment, inno­va­tion, and edu­ca­tion infra­struc­tures. Today, in May 2025, these pro­grams encom­pass more than 30 col­lab­o­ra­tive projects with a total port­fo­lio vol­ume of EUR 52 mil­lion.

Although the Oulu Inno­va­tion Alliance col­lab­o­ra­tion does not aim for quick wins, we can already assess what has been accom­plished through joint efforts and finan­cial invest­ments. Each pro­gram deserves its own arti­cle, but I will high­light the hydro­gen and com­pe­tence pro­grams as exam­ples in this text.

One of OIA’s four strate­gic focus areas is sus­tain­able cir­cu­lar econ­o­my and clean solu­tions. The pro­gram “Just and Green Val­ue Chains of the Hydro­gen Tran­si­tion,” coor­di­nat­ed by Pro­fes­sor Timo Fab­ri­tius of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, envi­sions that by the 2030s, clean hydro­gen-relat­ed busi­ness activ­i­ties will oper­ate across all hydro­gen val­ue chain areas—production, trans­port, stor­age, and utilization—in North­ern Ostro­both­nia.

The pro­gram has ini­ti­at­ed nine projects with diverse focus­es. One exam­ple is OuluGH2, a joint ini­tia­tive by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, OSAO (Oulu Voca­tion­al Col­lege), and Business­Oulu, which aims to devel­op an oper­a­tional mod­el for a hydro­gen econ­o­my inno­va­tion ecosys­tem by com­bin­ing a com­pa­ny-dri­ven busi­ness ecosys­tem with a research-ori­ent­ed knowl­edge ecosys­tem. North­ern Ostro­both­nia boasts sig­nif­i­cant exper­tise in the hydro­gen econ­o­my, but the work is cur­rent­ly scat­tered across var­i­ous com­pa­nies and research orga­ni­za­tions. This project seeks to bring these efforts togeth­er. A good exam­ple of deep­en­ing hydro­gen col­lab­o­ra­tion in the North is the North­ern Pow­er busi­ness event, which was held for the sec­ond time last Feb­ru­ary and expand­ed into an inter­na­tion­al hydro­gen week (Nordic Hydro­gen Week), show­cas­ing the region’s hydro­gen research and busi­ness activ­i­ties impres­sive­ly.

Through OIA col­lab­o­ra­tion, the aim is not only to improve busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in sub­stan­tive fields but also to address future com­pe­tence needs and ensure a skilled work­force for com­pa­nies. The OIA JTF pro­gram “Com­pe­tence” focus­es pre­cise­ly on this. Led by OSAO Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er Han­na Blomqvist and Business­Oulu Com­pe­tence Expert Soile Joki­nen, the pro­gram has brought togeth­er devel­op­ment projects for emerg­ing and devel­op­ing fields.

The semi­con­duc­tor and micro­elec­tron­ics sec­tors cre­ate increas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties for local com­pa­nies, but suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial­iza­tion of solu­tions and scal­ing of busi­ness require a func­tion­al ecosys­tem and fur­ther devel­op­ment of the tal­ent pool. Through the Merebe project, a joint effort by the city, uni­ver­si­ty, uni­ver­si­ty of applied sci­ences, and OSAO, com­pa­nies and pro­fes­sion­als in micro­elec­tron­ics have been reg­u­lar­ly brought togeth­er in the spring of 2025. The goal is to enhance the com­pe­ten­cy ecosys­tem’s per­for­mance rel­a­tive to region­al indus­tries and strength­en the oper­a­tions of the local net­work.

Anoth­er com­po­nent of the pro­gram that strength­ens the knowl­edge base across North­ern Ostro­both­nia is the “New Com­pe­tence for Green Tran­si­tion Fields” (UULA) project. The project aims to pro­vide new tools and ser­vices for employ­ment growth and oppor­tu­ni­ties for acquir­ing new skills in green tran­si­tion fields, par­tic­u­lar­ly address­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of the peat indus­try in North­ern Ostro­both­nia.

Aarne Kul­ta­lahti, a long-stand­ing advo­cate for RDI coop­er­a­tion and Inno­va­tion Direc­tor at Business­Oulu, has been steer­ing the JTF-pro­gram work of the OIA from its ini­tial stages. We reg­u­lar­ly mon­i­tor the out­comes of the inno­va­tion alliance’s JTF pro­grams and report progress and impacts to the co-financier, name­ly the City of Oulu.

Just Tran­si­tion Fund (JTF)

The Euro­pean Union estab­lished the Just Tran­si­tion Fund (JTF) to mit­i­gate the adverse effects of the cli­mate tran­si­tion. The fund aims to achieve this by sup­port­ing regions and work­ers most affect­ed by the tran­si­tion and pro­mot­ing a bal­anced socio-eco­nom­ic shift. (https://rakennerahastot.fi/en/just-transition-fund-jtf-)

Maria Vuoren­so­la
Pro­gram Man­ag­er, Oulu Inno­va­tion Alliance
Business­Oulu

Arti­cle in finnish