The activity featured Pekka Salmi, the CEO of the city of Tampere, who shared the experience of a city that, without being the capital, managed to establish itself as a technological, productive, and talent hub.
Within the activities of the Binational Technology Transfer Platform Chile-Finland, the city of Tampere along with the Chile Foundation signed a collaboration agreement in the areas of Education, technology, and entrepreneurship.
"Cooperation as a Superpower", with this phrase as the center of the seminar "Intelligent Regional Development: The Experience of Finland and Its Relevance to Chile", the city of Tampere through Pekka Salmi demonstrated the model of how they have transformed into a relevant city -the second after Helsinki- thanks to the cooperation among different entities, including educational, business, and public.
In this regard, Pekka Salmi, Director of the City of Tampere, commented on the collaboration among organizations, decentralization, and productive diversification as a model of the Finnish city and its relevance to regions of Chile, where innovation, education, businesses, and startups often operate without cohesion.
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"We have carried out a lot of collaboration in the field of technical and professional training, and that's why I'm here. But there's also another approach: we want to strengthen the cooperation between Fundación Chile and the city of Tampere. Perhaps some people could visit us and get to know Platform6 in Tampere, and explore if we have ideas that can be adapted here, in a way that boosts the development of startups in Santiago and in Chile," expressed to Entreprenerd, Pekka Salmi, the director of the City of Tampere.
The mining connection also appears as one of the most evident opportunities. Sandvik, a Swedish company with a significant development center in Tampere, and Metso, a Finnish company with a strong presence in Chile, emerge as possible bridges for Chilean startups linked to mining to view Finland not as a postcard of snow and saunas, but as a gateway to applied innovation.
LEARNING FROM AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM.
For Fundación Chile, this collaboration aims to specifically look at regional development in a systemic way. Hernán Araneda explained that Finland views its territories as a whole: industry, welfare, infrastructure, energy, training and talent, all connected.
"One of the dimensions we are going to work on here is how to think about regional development in a systematic way, something that is difficult for us in Chile, we think about things separately, and responsibilities for what happens in the regions are also fragmented. In Finland it's not like this, they look at the whole problem (...) everything is thought from an integrated point of view, not separate, and that is something we would like to learn from them," emphasized Hernán Araneda, General Manager of Fundación Chile.
During the activity, a collaboration agreement was also signed between Fundación Chile and Tampere, aimed at developing innovation ecosystems, growth of startups and SMEs, training of human capital, and sustainable territorial development.
Furthermore, this agreement will allow the connection of capabilities from both countries in key areas such as advanced technologies, decarbonization, and smart cities, consolidating cooperation as a central axis of development.
However, one word was the key to the event: cooperation. What does this mean for Finland?
In this regard, from the Finnish Embassy, Piia Nummela explained to Entreprenerd that for the Nordic country, along with trust, collaboration is part of their culture. " Together with trust, cooperation is one of the cultural values we have in Finland ".
He added, "We understand that the challenges we face today, such as companies becoming more productive, suppliers being able to offer solutions that respond to customers' challenges, require collaboration. We see this platform as an excellent opportunity for stakeholders in ecosystems in both Finland and Chile to collaborate on issues like mining or forestry."
The example of growth, scaling and standardization of Tampere, without being a capital city, establishes a path that different regional cities can seek to replicate. Flavia Perazzo, CEO of EIVA, highlighted that Tampere has several points in common with the Valparaiso Region.
"It is different to learn from cities that are capitals than to learn from cities that are regions of a country that are structured differently and have different skills and abilities and have different pains, and this adapts to what affects us more in the regions (...) I believe that in the case of Tampere, it is a very good option and a very good match with the position that the Valparaiso region holds," said Perazzo.
CONNECTION ENTREPRENEURS CHILE - FINLAND
This first event was held at startuplab01, and its director, Francisca Contreras, stated that the space is available to welcome more Finnish actors and also to open the possibility for Chilean entrepreneurs to connect with Finland.
"We hope that not only the delegation that visited us today, but also other players from Finland, can come and see what we are doing at startuplab01. The idea is to build these bridges in both directions: for them to come, but also for us to be able to send startups to Finland. Ultimately, we seek to build a much more active relationship that strengthens joint work, which is undoubtedly key in the development of this binational platform between Chile and Finland in the long term," said to Entreprenerd.
The challenge now will be that this alliance doesn't remain as just a PowerPoint presentation. Because if Tampere taught us anything in Santiago, it's that innovation doesn't just happen when someone signs an agreement. It happens when cities, businesses, universities, startups, and governments start working together.
The event featured the participation of Johanna Kotkajärvi, Ambassador of Finland, Pekka Salmi, Director of the City of Tampere, Hernán Araneda, General Manager of Fundación Chile, Miguel Vargas, Regional Governor of Atacama, Flavia Perazzo, Executive Director, EIVA Ecosystem, Diego Sierpe, Principal Socio-Economic Development Americas, Anglo American, Francisca Contreras, Executive Director startuplab.01, the Director of International Education at TREDU, Virpi Heinonen, representatives of Corfo, among them its Strategic Affairs Manager, Santiago Browne, representatives from the regional government of Los Ríos and delegations from VTT.