In 2019, Vertical created Rapid Tampere – a platform enabling collaboration between startups and industrial enterprises. In its first year, we recruited and prepared four industrial enterprises for collaborative innovation.
Brief
We want to establish a self-driving ecosystem of industrial innovation activities in the Tampere Business Region. The region has large industrial enterprises that have shown willingness to join forces, creating a larger force of innovation activities. We want this ecosystem to attract innovative global companies to the region, as well as showing the world the strength of our local industrial sector.
Approach
Business Tampere wanted to strengthen open innovation practices in the region. We proposed a collaboration program focusing on engaging with startups who can flexibly modify their offering. To fit multiple Industrial Clients’ needs under the collaboration umbrella we introduced the program under Rapid Tampere brand.
The presence of the brand on the Tampere market allows local industrial players to apply the methodology more than once. Moreover, we needed a single unifying body above Business Tampere, Vertical, and participants, that could be easily referred to in relation to projects.
Business Tampere has activated the industrial leaders in the region, introducing Vertical and Rapid Tampere program. Caruna, Kalmar, Sandvik, and Valmet have joined the Rapid-ecosystem of innovators in 2019. Vertical team has helped participants in discovering challenges that can be worked on in a collaborative way.
Active company representatives were able to attend the events of other participants to broaden local industrial collaboration.
After iterating the plans with Business Tampere and the region’s industrial ecosystem, we agreed to proceed with a standard Vertical Scouting round with 4 different themes.
The selected cases were; Data Enrichment to Understand Customer Needs, Safe Automation in a Busy Environment, New Ways of Learning Safety, and Robotic Solutions to Enhance Worker Health & Safety.
Outcome
Business Tampere and the participating companies agreed Rapid Tampere was a program for the region, by the region.
All clients found partners to pilot solutions with, giving them opportunities to develop and test new solutions in a fast way together with startups or growth companies. Rapid Tampere truly had a global reach, gathering proposals from companies located in 48 countries around the globe. Pilots and continuation projects are still ongoing, results will be updated at a later date.
