What is OIA?

Alliance col­lab­o­ra­tion has con­tributed to sys­tem­at­ic advance­ment of research, devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion activ­i­ties offi­cial­ly since 2009, when the first col­lab­o­ra­tive agree­ment of Oulu Inno­va­tion Alliance was signed between relat­ed par­ties. Of course, fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion has long-stand­ing tra­di­tions in Oulu even before this agree­ment.

The stake­hold­ers dur­ing the third OIA agree­ment peri­od in 2021–2027 include the City of Oulu, Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu, Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, Edu­ca­tion­al Con­sor­tium OSAO, Nat­ur­al Resources Insti­tute Fin­land, VTT Tech­ni­cal Research Cen­tre of Fin­land, Well­be­ing Ser­vices Coun­ty of North Ostro­both­nia, and Tech­nop­o­lis. The vision of OIA is to make Oulu the best Euro­pean ecosys­tem to cre­ate glob­al added val­ue with dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion.

The main goals set to the col­lab­o­ra­tion with­in OIA are

  1. Indus­try clus­ters and ecosys­tems cre­ate new busi­ness and growth for com­pa­nies
  2. Spear­heads unite, devel­op and revise the exper­tise in the clus­ters
  3. Invest­ments in the region have increased
  4. Fund­ing for research, devel­op­ment and inno­va­tion has increased
  5. Prac­ti­cal com­mit­ment of stake­hold­ers is strong, and the net­work is attrac­tive and agile when it comes to new leads

Strate­gic tar­get fields which the alliance part­ners are com­mit­ted to pro­mote are

  1. Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion in the chang­ing urban envi­ron­ment
  2. Dig­i­tal solu­tions for health and well-being
  3. Sus­tain­able clean­tech econ­o­my and clean solu­tions

Also includ­ed are the cross-cut­ting themes: Start-up entre­pre­neur­ship, Excel­lence and con­tin­u­ous learn­ing, Cre­ation and sup­port of busi­ness ecosys­tems, and City as an inno­va­tion plat­form – Oulu Smart City. Prepa­ra­tion and prac­ti­cal work has been divid­ed into 11 spear­head pro­grammes. Steer­ing of the spear­head pro­grammes is dis­trib­uted between the alliance par­ties.

Ecosys­tem agree­ment between the City of Oulu and the state

An ecosys­tem agree­ment between the City of Oulu and the state on inno­va­tion activ­i­ties in 2021–2027 cor­re­sponds large­ly to the Oulu Inno­va­tion Alliance’s strat­e­gy. The Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Affairs and Employ­ment in Fin­land nego­ti­at­ed such ecosys­tem agree­ments with 16 dif­fer­ent city regions for tar­get­ing pub­lic and pri­vate RDI fund­ing to strate­gi­cal­ly select­ed fields and build­ing the inter­na­tion­al brand of Fin­land as a fore­run­ner of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment, inno­v­a­tive acqui­si­tions, and tri­al cul­ture.

You can read the agree­ment between the city of Oulu and Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Affairs and Employ­ment of Fin­land here (PDF file, only in Finnish)