Reboot Finland – bring up new ideas, digitally :-) in Slush
The Reboot Finland – Hacks Pitching and Awards event in Slush on 30 December 2016 at 18.30–20.30 is part of a challenge campaign called Reboot Finland. The Reboot Finland campaign is a collaboration between the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, Tekes and Finpro and it aims to challenge us all to find new ways of thinking and acting so that the 100-year-old Finland can still be the best country in the world.
In the Reboot Finland – Hacks Pitching and Awards in Slush the best hacks from a number of Finnish hackathons will be pitched one more time. Several leading companies in their field have organised hackathon challenges, and top teams, consisting of people from startups, SMEs and big business, have undertaken to solve them. The Reboot Finland hackathon jury is chaired by Permanent Secretary Jari Gustafsson from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.
Why Reboot Finland and why we need new thinking?
Finland is broken. Finland ranks at the top of several international indicators for competence, innovativeness, equality and social mobility. Even so, a large number of Finns are out of work, and Finland’s debt burden is growing at an alarming rate. Where do we go wrong when our excellent basis produces only mediocre results?
This affects everyone regardless of age. We need to fix Finland so that everyone living here is doing well, so that everyone benefits from work, tax revenue and successful companies. Permanent Secretary Jari Gustafsson from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment explains what should be done. He will be chairing the jury at the Reboot Finland Hack Pitching and Awards event at Slush.
“I will challenge us all to find new ways of thinking and acting so that we can turn the tide and set Finland and Finnish companies on a path to growth and get them generating wellbeing around them. This is the way the 100-year-old Finland can still be the best country in the world,” says Gustafsson.
“I want digitalisation to have a central role in reforming industrial structures and service markets, and even public procurements. Digitalisation is the long-awaited tool that allows us to do things differently, to gear things up and help us reconstruct our competitiveness,” Gustafsson underlines.
“People are the ones that develop digitalisation, capitalise on it and use it. First and foremost digitalisation means a change in mindset by both private companies and public organisations. This is why we are stirring Finland to reboot, to restart itself,” says Digitalisation Area Director Pekka Sivonen from Tekes. Many companies have noticed, for example, that in one weekend a hackathon event can contribute more to the development of their products than several months of more traditional work.
Sivonen says that the products and services created in a digitalised Finland would be packages that combine software, big data, analytics and the new business models of the internet age. “You can put a serious price tag on these products, and you can get long-term customers,” Sivonen explains.
In Finland and elsewhere in the world the Slush event has evoked a culture of startups where digitalisation and global opportunities are built into the business idea from the very beginning. For a while Slush tunes the digital world and Helsinki to the same frequency and at the same time lifts Finland’s capacity for reinvention to a whole new level. This is why Reboot Finland is joining Slush.
The best outcomes of several Finnish hackathons at Slush 2016 will be presented at Reboot Finland – Hacks Pitching and Awards on 30 November 2016 at 18.30–20.30. Several leading companies in their field have organised hackathon challenges, and top teams, consisting of people from startups, SMEs and big business, have undertaken to solve them.
We invite you to Reboot Finland – Hacks Pitching and Awards where the best hacks will be pitched one more time. The awards will be presented by the jury chair, Permanent Secretary Jari Gustafsson from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. The jury will try to identify the best ideas to set Finland back on a growth path, in line with the current government programme in Finland.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment will release the names of the Reboot Finland award winners on Twitter and Youtube on Wednesday, 30 November 2016 at 20.30. The winners and the jury will be available for interviews around the Yellow Stage (Pitching Stage) at 20.30–21.00.
Watch the event live at www.slush.org
Inquiries:
Jari Gustafsson, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, tel. +358 29 504 7400
Pekka Sivonen, Director, Tekes, tel. +358 29 505 5996
Tapio Virkkunen, Development Manager, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, tel. +358 50 408 4826
Juhani Kivikangas, CEO, Teleforum ry, tel. +358 40 556 1228
www.rebootfinland.fi – report a digital action, your own or someone else’s!
suomifinland100.fi
Background:
Michael E. Porter: A theory of value chains in the age of Internet of Everything where physical products are gradually transformed into systemic entities and systems of systems. If this approach is not familiar to you, we recommend you to read the two articles below, published in The Harvard Business Review. Keep in mind especially the infographic on tractors in the first article.
https://hbr.org/2014/11/how-smart-connected-products-are-transforming-competition
https://hbr.org/2015/10/how-smart-connected-products-are-transforming-companies
Join us at www.rebootfinland.fi