Digipolis provides diverse business services for innovative young and growth companies.The associated profound guidance and counselling aims to boost the acquisition of financing, clarifying business plans and finding suitable cooperative partners.
One of Digipolis’s specialised business services is called “Invest In Lapland”. It aims to entice new, mainly international, companies to locate in Kemi. Together with our partners, we have expanded the service to cover the entire of Lapland. The popular Partnerbook is a corporate contact service developed by Digipolis. It is a social media and Internet portal hybrid.
The industrial and mining business programme is Digipolis’s longest-running development programme. It aims to promote the growth and the internationalisation of industrial and mining services companies, as well as to find new solutions for the commercial utilisation of industrial by-product flows in Arctic conditions.
Digipolis is actively looking for opportunities for new initiatives that can have business significance in the short or long term. Currently, these new initiatives involve the development of Arctic competence, particularly in industry and mining-related matters, and the wood construction industry which holds importance for the Sea Lapland region and its subsequent modernisation.
Digipolis practices systematic cooperation with various research and educational organisations on all of its focus areas. Digipolis provides leveraged financing for cooperative research and education projects relating to industrial and mining services, Arctic competence or wood construction.
Contact information:
Kimmo Heikka, Managing Director
Tietokatu 6, FI-94600 Kemi, Finland
Tel. +358 40 555 8020
E-mail: kimmo.heikka@digipolis.fi
The Invest in Lapland project aims to encourage and win direct foreign investments and entice both international and domestic companies to locate in Lapland. The Invest in Lapland project provides a way of notifying foreign companies and investors about investment opportunities in Lapland in a uniform manner.
Furthermore, its aim is to create functioning, enterprise-based cooperation between the local public and private sector actors in order to improve the investment environment. The service also aims to encourage local companies to engage in international networking.
Overall, the goals of the Invest in Lapland activities are long-term in nature; the typical time span of foreign investments from preparation to implementation is 2–7 years. The project primarily strives to highlight Lapland’s strengths: industry, tourism and the creative sector.
The project personnel include two investment advisors whose focus is on industry in Kemi, and on tourism and the creative sector in Rovaniemi. Forecasts indicating a very bright future for Lapland’s industrial development have created a positive aura around the project. Over the next 10–15 years, industrial investments in Lapland will total EUR 14–15 billion. Correspondingly, industrial investments in the so-called European High North region over the same period will total approximately EUR 120–130 billion. The significance of the whole Arctic region is on the increase due to the utilisation of the natural resources in the area, climate change and the opening of new logistics routes to Asia.
Project participants, headed by Rovaniemen Kehitys Oy and Kemin Digipolis Oy, are the Rovaniemi, Kemi-Tornio and Tunturi-Lappi regions and the Inari, Sodankylä, Kemijärvi and Pelkosenniemi municipalities. Invest in Lapland is funded by the EU, the state of Finland (operational environment development grant) and the participating municipalities.
Contact information
Kimmo Heikka, Managing Director
Tietokatu 6, FI-94600 Kemi, Finland
Tel. +358 40 555 8020
E-mail: kimmo.heikka@digipolis.fi
The Partnerbook web service (partnerbook.fi) is based on genuine networking. It enables both companies and communities to offer and to search for suitable services in real time.
Developed by Digipolis since 2009, Partnerbook engages in close cooperation with companies and communities. It has been improved on the basis of user feedback in order to achieve a better symbiosis with the requirements of the user organisations.
All registered companies may create a profile on Partnerbook, search for partners interested in their ideas, submit requests for tenders, participate in discussions, recruit competent personnel and publish information about their events.
The web service is used by some 400 companies, ranging from one-person enterprises to large companies employing hundreds of people. LKAB, a mining company owned by the state of Sweden, is one of the companies whose requests for tenders are shown on Partnerbook’s main page. Current requests for tenders are relayed to the main page as RSS feeds. The main page shows the active procurement processes and projects of the various actors, as well as any planned procurements.
Partnerbook is a completely unique, continuously developing service. One of its main assets is its user-friendliness. The site is clear and informative, and as everything is listed under one address, searching for suitable contacts is easy. Furthermore, the service can be accessed on a tablet or a smartphone, anytime, anywhere.
In addition to providing an enterprise meeting place, the web service also enables shared marketing and R&D projects. All this provides companies with good opportunities for positive visibility, especially given the current challenging financial outlook. Large actors will find it particularly easy to find more competent service providers when searching through Partnerbook. The possibilities created by Partnerbook are brought to the fore in large projects as smaller companies get the opportunity to search for partners.
Contact information
Kimmo Heikka, Managing Director
Tietokatu 6, FI-94600 Kemi, Finland
Tel. +358 40 555 8020
E-mail: kimmo.heikka@digipolis.fi
www.partnerbook.fi
