Finns help Canadians learn about Entrepreneurship at Canada 3.0 Conference in Stratford, Ontario

Finns, Antti Vilpponen and Lari Lohikoski, taught me a lot about Entrepreneurship at the 3.0 Conference in Stratford, sponsored by a consortium of High-Tech Companies from the Region, including Open Text.

The photo to the left is of L: Charles Borras and R: Antti Vilpponen who was one of the Finnish presenters talking about case studies of digital incubators in Finland in the Digital Media Research & Commercialization stream of this burst-at-the-seams conference with about 1000 participants by some reports.

The whole conference has been informative, but I learned a few really valuable things from these Finnish Entrepreneurs. These are the points that I took away from their talk:

• you have to focus on the innovation process from beginning of the venture to the end;
• you can organize a regional development company and then have companies and individuals within the group self-select with whom they would like to work based on mutual interest;
• centres of expertise can be used to create joint projects;
• Finland has its own national digital content cluster, much like the one Canada is creating;
• small businesses can band together to create first-line business incubators and services;
• a pool of consultants can be created to support start-ups through their life cycle;
• displaced, but very highly trained workers, should be encouraged by government and the private sector to continue using their skills to create new enterprises;
• smaller countries like Finland necessarily have to look overseas to help the process of innovation;
• innovation alone has no commercial value;
• big companies should be encouraged to set up incubator companies;
• visibility, such as provided by news reports in http://www.arcticstartup.com/, fosters interest in investing in new companies;
• we need to create a culture of innovation;
• start-ups can take matters into their own hands and start their own incubation space if 3 or 4 companies get together;
• large companies need to learn how to use small companies and start-ups in doing their work.

Vilpponen and several partners have established http://www.arcticstartup.com/ which is definitely worth emulating. The organization allows start-ups to band together on-line, increase co-operation, increase visbility for member companies, and raise venture capital. You will also want to check http://www.culminatum.com/ which is owned and operated to foster innovation by a consortium of Helsinki business interests.
I was pleased to invite Antti to join Kitchener-Waterloo Entrepreneurs, the largest on-line group of entrepreneurs in Kitchener-Waterloo.