LOOKING FOR NEW TECHNOLOGIES
One of the reasons for starting the Mar-
itime Accelerator programme was to
improve communication and visibility
between the Finnish maritime industry
and companies specialising in other kinds
of technologies, such as remote network-
ing and monitoring, artificial intelligence,
augmented reality, machine-learning, and
health technology.
”After preliminary discussions with
potential corporate partners, the pro-
gramme was started at the end of 2017.
We charted the needs of a number of mar-
itime corporations for their strategic initi-
atives of the near future. Of course, the
corporations could hire and train new per-
sonnel by themselves, but that would take
more time than finding new partner com-
panies with the required know-how and
expertise,” Laiterä explains.
”Consequently, the search was on for
growth companies offering a product or
service matching the specific challenges
set by our corporate partners, and want-
ing to expand their market areas to the
maritime field.”
“Combing through the startup eco-
systems world-wide, more than 500 poten-
tial enterprises were found. The screening
for the particular needs of our corporate
”It is good to see how these innovative growth companies and large maritime corporations
have found new cooperative potential through the Maritime Accelerator programme,” says
Mr. Jukka Laiterä, Senior Advisor for Turku Science Park Ltd.
partners were made in several phases.”
At the end of the initial round in
the beginning of last September, approx-
imately ten of the best matching compa-
“
One of our long-term
objectives is to boost
cross-scientific cooperation
and create an innovation
ecosystem within the
maritime industry.
12
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nies for each partner were interviewed
over the internet.
”The majority of the companies were
from abroad, quite many from the United
States.”
A few of the most promising enter-
prises were selected by each of the cor-
porate partners to participate in a series
of three two-day boot camps in Finland,
for the purpose of tailoring and fine-tun-
ing the offering of the growth enterprises
to suit the specific needs of the maritime
company in question.
SEVEN STARTUPS FOR THE FINALS
The startups in the final phase at hand
were Tulip, Delta Cygni Labs, Neuron