

How a small town in Finland is revolutionizing the way we learn in the next century
This is a story about a bold vision and a movement that will turn the vision into reality. Join the movement! Two years ago we came up with a big idea. The idea was to pack students, startups, investors and global leaders on a cruise ship and sail across the Baltic Sea on a four day idea acceleration workshop. We would call this the Entrepreneur-SHIP. Duh - the Entrepreneur-SHIP. How cheesy is that! Yes - you got it. The Noah's ark for entrepreneurial learning. SLUSH on a cru


Building the future: Toolkit for sustainable urban planning
City planning sets the long-term framework and goals for the development of the built environment for the coming decades. The urban planners’ work is challenging, as they should be able to assess now how to build our future living environment and what it will be like. VTT has developed several supporting urban planning tools, which enable showing of the impacts of planning choices for decision-makers, residents and other stakeholders. Mari Hukkalainen, Senior Specialist The p


Robot cars – a future mode of transport
When your car moves without a driver, it suddenly begins to feel like a human and you even start talking to it. Will self-driving vehicles soon become part of everyday life? Will we be hopping into robot cars in the near future? In May, VTT organised a customer event, where people had a genuine opportunity to find out how it feels to travel in a driverless car. A ‘safety person’ was present during the demo situation, but his only task was to monitor how the robot car behaves


Theme digitalisation: Digital transformation calls for user-centricity and technological knowledge
“Theme digitalisation” blog series offers now Olli Kuusisto’s and Anu Seisto’s views on user-centricity. Read also the previous digitalisation posts: Physical product or digital service? and How to navigate successfully through the digital transformation. Internet of Things (IoT) and changes brought by digitalisation are increasingly becoming a part of our lives at work and at home. Gartner has predicted that more than 20 billion objects and entities will be connected to the


Energy efficiency is the key component of sustainable development in cities
The UN Habitat New Urban Agenda was released a few weeks in Quito, Equador. The task to write a new urban agenda has not been easy, given that pre-conditions and interests are different in different UN countries. At the same time, there is an urgent need to act in favour of sustainable development in cities. The striking fact is that urban settlements covers roughly 2.7% of the surface area of the globe, but consume 70% of resources and hence produces 75% of CO2 emissions. Mo