Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol2-1 > Innovation Finland

Finland saw its GDP diminished during both the third and fourth quarters of 2008, matching a definition for recession. During the first quarter of 2009, GDP fell by 7.6% on a year-to-year basis. Finland also witnessed a collapse in foreign trade and the bleak economic situation is reflected in employment as well. Implementation of a 2009 government stimulus package has provided additional resources for research grants, as well as development and innovation grants, in order to secure the continuity and level of RDI.

Finland’s EIS 2008 performance was above or close to the EU-27 average in almost all individual indicators and the country belongs to the innovation leaders group. Finland ranks first in two of the seven dimensions through which innovation performance is assessed in the EIS – ie Human Resources and Firm Investments.

Regarding the remaining five dimensions, Finland’s performance is above the EU average in Finance and Support (fifth), Linkages and Entrepreneurship (eighth), and Throughputs (eighth), whereas in two dimensions, Innovators and Economic Effects, Finland is just below the EU average.

There is still a need to develop new strategies for the future. The old innovation approach has clung too much to traditional science and technology policy perspectives and there is a need to adjust to match with changes taking place in both firm strategies and innovation activities.

Main innovation challenges

• Transformation of firm strategies and emerging new innovation models.
• Increase and enforce Finland’s attractiveness for investments.
• Broaden the base of innovative growthoriented enterprises.

Conclusions

Innovation policy development in Finland will be dominated by the implementation of the national innovation strategy, as well as proposals put forward by the international evaluation panel.

In many areas, the national innovation strategy lacks concrete plans of action and the concept of demand-oriented and user-oriented innovation policy needs clarification in order to become a concrete tool for policy-making.

The aim of the current Cabinet is to create a “one-stop shop” for public business development services. Launching a new preferential tax-treatment scheme to company R&D from the beginning of 2010 and its impact on R&D behaviour of companies will be carefully observed by policy-makers.