Creating Finnish Success Stories: Experiences From Ecosystem Traineeship
What is it like to do a traineeship at Business Finland? What are business and innovation ecosystems? Business Finland’s Ecosystem Trainee Johanna Lamberg begins the series of trainee blogs released during autumn 2021. Johanna sheds a light on her seven-month traineeship and describes how she helps Business Finland turn Finnish innovation and business ecosystems into World-Class Ecosystems. During her trainee period, she will be working on Business Finland’s ecosystem concept and services with Business Finland experts, customers, and stakeholders.
Trainees bring summer into Business Finland
I began my traineeship at Business Finland's Network Services in June. It has been inspiring to get to know my colleagues, as everyone is a skilled professional in their field. During my first month, I had a chance to chat with energy, space, AI, and health and wellness experts who work from various locations in Finland and abroad. I did not realize how vast the organization was until I stepped into it! Though I work among super experts, I feel appreciated as an equal. Overall, I feel like everyone was quite excited when the trainees arrived. My supervisor even said that trainees bring summer into Business Finland: with new interns come the fresh breeze of new ideas, diverse expertise, and perspectives. It goes without saying that making trainees feel welcome from the first day is valuable; achieving that fully remotely due to COVID19, is something.
Business Finland has proven that it does not only aim at showcasing the Finnish innovation expertise but also wants to support the development of the new generation of professionals.
Eco what?
My traineeship revolves mainly around the Business Finland ecosystem concept and services. When we talk about ecosystems, we refer to business and innovation networks of different actors, like companies and research organizations. Together, the ecosystem participants aim to solve future challenges that may be too big to handle alone. There is power in collaboration and knowledge sharing: on the one hand, ecosystems increase the Finnish research, development, and innovation activities by creating new solutions regarding, for example, circular economy. On the other hand, they create new networks, growth, and support internationalization while reducing the risks of big strategic leaps that companies could face alone. Right now, Business Finland’s Challenge Competition for Leading Companies is calling the globally operating companies to create solutions for promoting the green transition in Finland through ecosystem collaboration. Though ecosystems may feel complex and messy at first, they seem like a prominent way to put Finnish knowledge and expertise on the map. Ecosystems are one of the priorities in Business Finland’s strategy for the year 2025.
Did you know that the Finnish innovation environment is one of the best in the world?
One of Business Finland’s tasks is to support ecosystems in reaching their full potential in that environment – nationally and internationally. During my internship, my job is to go through a recently published external Ecosystem Impact Study that evaluates the current ecosystem concept and services at Business Finland. In close collaboration with our experts, customers and stakeholders, I will look at the recommendations of the study and figure out how Business Finland could become an even better partner by tweaking their current services, or by designing new ones. In practice, I will be doing a lot of reading, interviewing, and analyzing. It has been great to be working on a real development project: I get to take ownership of the project by planning my tasks and schedules by myself. Already after two months, I feel like I have taken a giant leap with my expertise.
Building the future with Business Finland
I graduated with a Master of Social Sciences from Futures Studies this July, and the ecosystem traineeship has been a perfect next step on my path. Business Finland has an ambitious, future-driven vision and strategy, and it has been motivating to hear about Business Finland’s work on leading the way to globalizing Finnish innovation and sustainability knowledge. The traineeship has allowed me to understand the dynamics of public-private partnerships in Finland as well as the big picture of the national and international business and innovation environment. Most importantly, however, Business Finland has proven that it does not only aim at showcasing the Finnish innovation expertise but also wants to support the development of the new generation of professionals by taking on trainees and giving them opportunities to grow.
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