Business Finland strategy

Our new strategy aims to serve the needs of the Finnish economy even better than before and in a more needs-oriented manner

Business Finland is a Finnish public-sector organization offering innovation funding and internationalization services as well as promoting tourism and investments in Finland.

During 2020, Business Finland prepared a new strategy for 2025. There are three major changes to the previous strategy: we will adopt an even more customer-oriented approach while enhancing our employee experience, we will be more proactive in seizing the opportunities arising from significant societal changes, and we will place sustainable development at the heart of our strategy and operations.

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We generate prosperity for Finland by accelerating our customers´ sustainable growth globally.

FINLAND DEFINING THE FUTURE.
We excel at developing and refining the best of Finnish potential and matching it with global opportunities. We create world-class success stories.

We focus on economic growth, sustainability, and competitiveness

The core of our existence is to generate prosperity for Finland. At Business Finland, we see prosperity as being created at the intersection of three equally important areas: economic growth; sustainability; and competitiveness.

We enhance economic growth, which forms the foundation for prosperity. For our customers, economic growth relates especially to the ability to generate added value and increase export income, whereas on the societal level, this is reflected, for example, in a positive current account for Finland.

Sustainability is a prerequisite for long-term economic growth. In addition, the need for sustainable solutions generates new, rapidly growing market opportunities. By sustainability, we refer to all three aspects: economic, ecological and social.

The generation of prosperity in the long term also requires ensuring competitiveness. Our role in this is to strengthen our customers' long-term competitiveness by supporting them in developing capabilities that are required for renewal and resilience. We strive for a dynamic, diverse, and agile Finnish business environment, which is conducive to innovation and can adjust to unexpected circumstances.

Our Thematic Focus Areas 

Future opportunities

Business Finland's missions accelerate systemic change and help solve major global challenges. Our missions aim to create value for society on a broad scale and identify significant future market opportunities for Finnish companies.

Business Finland's missions are selected from sectors that are experiencing significant global changes. The goal of the mission-based approach is to provide Finnish companies with more opportunities to take advantage of future market opportunities.

In practice, missions combine long-term strategic forecasting with assisting companies here and now. In the future, missions will play a strong role in Business Finland's programs, including those that have already started and those that will be started in the future.

Our mission objectives

The goal of the Digital Native Finland mission is to accelerate digital transformation and create a global competitive advantage for Finnish companies. By increasing digital capabilities, we can increase sustainable customer value and raise the productivity of companies to the next level. Investing in the connectivity and data economy of the future together with the development of software expertise will provide our export companies with a competitive advantage and attract foreign investments.

The goal of the Zero Carbon Future mission is to significantly increase Finland's carbon handprint in the world. We focus especially on the energy transition in manufacturing, transport and mobility, as well as in cities, utilizing the possibilities of digitalization and the circular economy. This goal can be reached by actively bringing global developments to the awareness of Finnish companies and guiding innovations to solve the challenges of the future. With the mission, we also want to accelerate the international growth of companies and connect Finnish companies to new value chains emerging in the world.

The goal of the Circular transition for Zero Waste mission is to support Finnish companies in their transition for circular economy and for zero waste in order to increase competitiveness and sustainable growth. We facilitate Finnish circular business models and solutions to be adopted and scaled globally and also circular economy investments to Finland. We are supporting ways to enhance resource productivity and circular material use rate, to create new added value for the economy, and ways to eliminate waste.

The Healthcare Reimagined 2035 mission aims to help address global health challenges such as the continued rise in healthcare costs and the worsening shortage of healthcare workers. The goal of the mission is to harness change and create new business, as well as accelerate the growth, export and investment of companies. The mission aims to make Finland a leading RDI hub in the health sector in Europe and a recognised architect of preventive healthcare.

The objective of the Immersive Digital Life mission is to make Finland a leading architect and enabler of immersive digital life by 2035. Together with partners, Finland will play a strong role in the ecosystems and platforms in the theme, enabling inclusive and accessible participatory experiences for all.

Six strategic goals set our direction towards 2025.

We want our customers to be:

• globally thriving companies,
• developers of new sustainable solutions and operations, and
• bold reformers of business.

By achieving these three customer-level goals, we contribute to Finland being

• a productive economy,
• a superpower in sustainable development, and
• an attractive and resilient business landscape.

To achieve our goals, we have defined five strategic priorities.

We want to be:

• a value adding and proactive partner for our customers. We focus especially on customers we provide the greatest value for, and those that show the most potential with regard to our strategic goals. We deepen our understanding of customer needs and aspirations, and we participate in our customers' day-to-day operations. We seek out current and future market opportunities and turn them into unique business opportunities for our customers.

• a strong and proactive actor in society. We want to have a proactive role in society as a thought leader in selected topics. We bring public and private actors together around selected missions that address global challenges and provide significant new market opportunities for Finnish companies. We orchestrate the formation of selected value-adding networks and ecosystems.

• a change agent for sustainable business. We help our customers improve their ecological, social, and economic sustainability by raising awareness and by encouraging them to pay attention to matters related to sustainability. We help our customers develop solutions that contribute to positive development (the UN's Sustainable Development Goals). We ensure that our organization complies with the principles of sustainable development.

• the best workplace for leading-edge expertise. We strive to be a thought-leader and we nurture high-class expertise in selected, strategically significant areas. We provide our experts with accelerated opportunities for learning and expertise development. We develop our means for attracting talent. We build trust and value-based culture: we work together toward a common goal.

• an operationally excellent and agile organization. We strive to enhance our focus and to make our processes more efficient in both internal operations and collaboration with our partners. We invest in modern digital tools and automated processes that utilize AI. This facilitates our steering operations and allows us to focus on activities that are more value-generating. We invest in dynamic partner networks, particularly the Team Finland network, in order to fully utilize synergies and eliminate overlapping work. We ensure that our service areas operate in a coordinated manner as a single entity.

Business Finland's values

Our values are reflected in our day-to-day collaboration with customers, partners, and colleagues. They provide the foundation for our activities and help us reach our strategic goals.

WITH PASSION We feel passionate about working for the good of Finland.

THINK BIG The world is our playing field.

ALL TOGETHER We share our goals and agenda. We work together as an organization and with our partners to achieve our goals.

WITH SISU At the end of the day, only actions and results matter.