Finland’s Smart City Innovation Cluster (SCIC) wants to bring service providers, research institutes and cities closer together to foster new solutions for urban challenges and infrastructure development.
The cooperative venture, which represents more than 120 leading players in the smart field, bundles together different services to address specific requests from city planners and project owners.
These bespoke, multivendor offerings can help accelerate adoption of the latest solutions and innovations, while making it easier for smaller companies and technical specialists to be involved in large-scale projects.
“Our proposals include a minimum of three companies,” recounts SCIC’s CEO Pertti Kortejärvi. “We don’t promote single company offerings. It’s always an integrated solution.”
The cluster is working on more than 70 projects worldwide. Asia is a major focus and growth area. The ASEAN region, for example, is home to large-scale greenfield developments that can incorporate original smart city concepts at the planning stage.
Indonesia’s planned new capital city Nusantara is under construction on the island of Borneo using smart and sustainable principles. Thailand’s Eastern Economic Corridor network, which spans three provinces, aims to create a major new economic hub on the country’s eastern seaboard.
SCIC is helping facilitate technical proposals for both projects, among others in the region and further afield.
Mr Kortejärvi presented a tailored package of technical and service solutions for a smart toll road in Nusantara at a project investment session on transport and logistics infrastructure at the 2024 Belt and Road Summit in Hong Kong.
The Belt and Road Summit – organised by the Hong Kong SAR Government and Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) – is an annual conference gathering key officials, business leaders and innovators from Belt and Road countries and beyond to deepen multilateral cooperation.
The Finnish venture’s CEO sounded out funding schemes and potential investors for his proposal during the Summit, while connecting with a variety of solution providers to broaden and diversify the cooperative’s membership base.
He further strengthened his network in April this year at HTKDC’s annual InnoEX tech fair, a vibrant international business platform for next-gen solutions.
These connections included a promising collaboration with a Hong Kong drone provider to sell its rescue drone system in Europe and Asia, among others.
“The Belt and Road Summit and InnoEX both provided good negotiations, good networking and information, especially for new concepts for smart solutions,” Mr Kortejärvi noted.
New narratives for urban life
The cooperative first started leveraging the Hong Kong platform to raise its profile and expand its reach in Asian markets and beyond, following a meeting with the HKTDC’s Executive Director Margaret Fong in Helsinki in 2024.
On this occasion, which was part of an HKTDC market visit to Finland and Denmark, Mr Kortejärvi expressed keen interest in partnering with Hong Kong service providers for SCIC’s projects.
HKTDC’s London office, which also oversees the Nordic markets, continued the conversation, providing intelligence on Hong Kong and relevant opportunities for the venture that paved the way for participation in the Belt and Road Summit and InnoEX.
Hong Kong has long been committed to smart city development to improve the city’s quality of life and urban efficiency through innovation and technology.
The Hong Kong SAR Government released the Smart City Blueprint for Hong Kong in 2017, which highlighted 76 initiatives in six areas: smart mobility, smart living, smart environment, smart people, smart government and smart economy.
The follow-up Smart City Blueprint for Hong Kong 2.0 was published in 2020, outlining more than 130 smart city initiatives across the same areas.
Achievements include the widespread adoption of popular digital services, like the iAM Smart platform and Faster Payment System. A Traffic Data Analytics System is in operation to enhance traffic efficiency, while a Green Tech Fund has been created to support research in areas, like decarbonisation.
Hong Kong’s commitment to smart city development, complemented by its fundamental strengths and advantages, makes it an ideal partner for SCIC projects, remarks Mr Kortejärvi.
“Together, we can change the narratives of tomorrow’s cities.”