Vaasa EnergyWeek – A Visit to The Nordic Hub for Energy Technology
Why would someone leave the warm spring weather in Austria in March to head to the still icy city of Vaasa far up north in Finland?
Because of the annual EnergyWeek there that gathers energy enthusiasts from all over the world. This event attracts a quite diverse mix of people from many different fields, such as startups, research, academia, policy makers, ambassadors, students and others.
All of them with the same goal of creating an ecosystem for the future of energy that enables innovation across companies and countries and strengthening collaborations to leverage new technologies and business models.
All this was hosted by EnergyVaasa, the largest energy technology hub in the Nordic countries, a world leading ecosystem within different technologies, e.g., smart electrical solutions, sustainable energy, flexible power generation and digitalization.
Among the partnering companies are big players such as Wärtsilä, ABB, Danfoss, Hitachi Energy, Wapice, EY and many others.
The program of EnergyWeek 2024 gravitated around four major topics:
Energy & Climate
Wind & Renewable Energy
Energy Storage
Gas Energy
Other hot topics where circular economy, future smart cities, energy regulation, business and innovation. High level speakers and experts where present to share information, hear about the latest news and most interesting cases, extend their networks and do business. All this was packed into a varied program of keynotes, seminars, workshop, panels, fireside chats and intense B2B meetings in the matchmaking area where the foundation for real deals was built.
Creators Expedition’s Contribution:
Marko Koski invited us to the Energspin Forum to talk about collaborative innovation between startups and corporates and about building co-innovation ecosystems between companies of different industries.
In a fireside chat, Alexander Ulz from our team shared insights on AVL’s startup program Creators Expedition and shed a light on the recently established multi-corporate co-innovation ecosystem “Creators Co-Lab”. On stage he was discussing with Finnish serial entrepreneur and CEO of Hycamite Matti Malkamäki hosted by Miikka Miettinen.
This resulted in many interesting follow-up discussions and meetings that opened the doors to future co-innovation projects with some of the companies at the event.
In summary, it definitely paid off to get the warm winter clothes out of the wardrobe again for this trip to Finland as we are seeing very promising opportunities for collaborative innovation arising from the participation in EnergyWeek.
