The project, Nordic Innovation Ecosystem Mobilisation, is supported by Nordic Innovation and sets out to map, benchmark, and strengthen innovation ecosystems across the Nordics.
The consortium brings together six organisations that are active parts of their national innovation ecosystems. The organisations bring years of accumulated domain knowledge and established relationships across government, academia, capital, and industry into the project:
- SISP (Sweden): Nordic coordination and overall project management, system-level insight, policy relevance.
- Smart Innovation Norway (Norway): Overall contractual responsibility, financial administration, governance and coordination towards Nordic Innovation.
- TechBBQ (Denmark): Direct access to startup, scaleup, investor, corporate, and international innovation communities.
- Maria 01 (Finland): The Nordics’ largest startup hub, contributing with strong international networks and facilitating collaboration across startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem actors.
- KLAK – Icelandic Startups (Iceland): Insights from a small, highly connected ecosystem with rapid feedback loops and high international exposure.
- Startup Estonia (Estonia): National startup ecosystem development, strong public–private coordination, and deep experience in digital governance, scaleup policy, and international talent attraction.
"The national innovation ecosystems play a crucial role in strengthening Nordic competitiveness. By mobilizing and working together, we can really unlock the energy and accelerate the opportunities of the world’s 12th largest economy."
– Joonas Leppänen, Senior Advisor at Nordic Innovation
A new analytical framework
The project applies an updated, startup-centric model of the Quadruple Helix framework, extended with two additional stakeholder groups to form more of a “Hexuple Helix” – reflecting the full range of actors shaping how startups emerge, grow, and scale in the Nordic region. Each country is analysed across six dimensions: Policy & Governance, Finance & Capital, Research & Knowledge, Innovation Support, Industry & Corporates, and Startups & Scaleups, covering the full journey from pre-seed to unicorn.
“The Nordic and Baltic countries each have genuine strengths in innovation, but we rarely look at ourselves together as a coherent region. What makes this project different is that the analysis is being done by organisations that live inside these ecosystems every day. Each partner brings a level of contextual understanding and trusted access that no outside consultancy could replicate. We are not just mapping the Nordic innovation landscape – we are mobilising it.” says Ellinor Bokedal, Project Manager, and Policy Director at SISP.
Results to be presented at TechBBQ in August
The project’s findings, including a consolidated Nordic ecosystem overview, identified systemic gaps and leverage points, and a prioritised coordination architecture for future cross-border collaboration, will be presented at TechBBQ in Copenhagen in August.
Background
The Nordic Innovation Ecosystem Mobilization project is supported under the program: Nordic Forward: Competitiveness and resilience for 2050.
