To be the world’s leading testbed for innovation

In 2013 Helsinki City Council set an ambitious target: to be the world’s leading testbed for innovation. Since then a systematic opening of city infrastructure, services and data, along with the development of tools, has been the core of our innovation ecosystem thinking.

In practice, this means step-by-step opening of roads, ports, public spaces, seafront, schools, public healthcare and whole city districts like Kalasatama as testbeds.

Examples of the new co-innovation platforms resulting from these activities are Maria 01, the largest startup community in the Nordics, Smart & Clean foundation, making Helsinki the world’s best testbed for smart and clean solutions and Jätkäsaari Smart Mobility Lab with the world’s first trials of autonomous buses on open streets.

We want Helsinki to be a role model city, an open city that works together with metropolitan, national and global partners. By promoting our success stories globally, we attract talent and investments and accelerate the speed of development.

Helsinki DNA is based on the four cornerstones of our culture: Equality, world-class education, ICT maker culture and our ‘one Hel of an impact’ attitude, which challenges us to take impactful, brave and visionary actions for a better world.

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