​After hosting the Startup Ecosystem Development workshop and receiving positive feedback from our guests, we would like to share with our readers the knowledge and success stories we gathered from presenters and visitors.

The workshop was a one-day event during SLUSH festival in Helsinki, it attracted interest on global scale: the guests came from 9 countries in Europe, South America and Asia and various business areas, including policy makers, platforms and API developers, professional services, multinational corporation and startup communities (incubators, accelerators and hackathons).
 
The idea behind hosting such workshop was to introduce key stakeholders to ecosystem development framework that helps in targeting various activities and measuring the impact of these activities, and also assist in better understanding the relations between different areas.

Despite having limited time to cover such a vast concept, the workshop speakers from Startup Commons and Resolute HQ introduced guests to Ecosystem Development process from the ground up:

• Providing common language and terminology to use in relation to startup development stages
• Defining the startup ecosystem as a core part of local/regional economy
• Presenting balanced ecosystem framework and metrics
• Identifying the key contributors to the ecosystem

 
To showcase practical applications of the theory, we had several inspiring presentations from the companies already working (and succeeding) in this space:

• Urban Mill - Accelerating urban life via Smart Innovation Ecosystem Platform Service
• Ultrahack - The biggest hackathon platform in Europe.
• Think Company - Entrepreneurial community at the University of Helsinki run by students and researchers
• NewCo Helsinki - Introducing Startup Exchange Network to provide an easy first access for startups to markets relevant to their business development.
• Tiimiakatemia - Creating entrepreneurship by combining the worlds of business and education within Jyvaskyla University of Applied Sciences.
• Crowd Valley - Enabling investment processes online via digital finance framework.

Additionally, big number of practical materials and tools were provided during and after the workshop.

We would also like to say thanks to our esteemed partners – EY and University of Helsinki / Think Company for their excellent assistance during the workshop, as well as for City of Helsinki, Head of Unit, Tommo Koivusalo for the kind words and encouragement for shared efforts that systematic development of vibrant Startup Ecosystems requires.
 
The video streaming was not provided at the event, but we highly recommend to watch this video of Valto Loikkanen presenting at DOKU: TECH 2016 on “Raising ecosystems from the ground up”.
 
From talking to our guests it became obvious that ecosystems and their development have become an urgent topic in many parts of the world. That is way we are taking on an ambitious goal for 2017 to host 12 workshops around the world. We welcome all stakeholders who are wishing to collaborate on various areas for such event (place, coffee, food, communication, etc.). The concept and main themes for the workshop can be found here. Please get in touch to discuss opportunities for partnership!

And for the readers, keenly interested in the subject, we provide detailed excerpts from the workshop on specifics of ecosystem development.
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• Definitions - it is generally mixed along the line of concepts such as solo entrepreneurs, family businesses, micro companies, small & medium companies and startups. Each of these business formations has concrete demands, they require clear understanding of the stages they are moving through along the way. Even more so, being dynamic organizations by nature, these entities require specific support and effective coordination among the different supporting players for each of them. 

• Different parties and stakeholders approach the startup ecosystem from different perspective, as they are operating and contributing at different stages, using different terminology, having own understanding and looking at the ecosystem as a whole in a very particular and individual way, with their own definition about the meaning of successful startup ecosystem. Alignment across these different players is needed for the startup ecosystem to deliver its full potential.

• Developing startup ecosystems is multidimensional process that involves seemingly independent, but inherently connected activities and processes as well as multiple organizations and stakeholders with varying focuses and agendas. A startup ecosystem acts as a medium for communicating complex connections via “ecosystem thinking”,  and in this process there is a danger that some tools and activities like policy, services model or funding instrument aimed for specific area of the ecosystem may also have unintentional side effects for some other measure of the ecosystem elsewhere. Therefore, when there is lack of effective support structure for startups, it’s important to introduce a holistic framework to help develop the ecosystem in balanced manner, begin to understand the connections, relations and impacts of various actions and policies, as well as to have a framework to communicate which area a specific action aimed at and to measure impact of such action.

• Navigating through uncertainty includes significant waste of time and resources, where, without metrics, you have no way of knowing if you have just taken one step forward or two steps back. Only things that can be understood, can be developed, and only things that can be measured, can be improved. That is the reason why it is of highest priority for any startup ecosystem to design and implement set of metrics that can give objective information to modify, adjust or refine its current action plan and accelerate things.

• New digital investing models and related processes accelerate startup and SME ecosystems knowledge, especially with reference to funding processes and investor expectations. From a general perspective the digital finance market is all about better access, transparency and efficiency. This, along with the data that this digital market generates, leads to even faster learning, lower risks and further development.

 
2017 promises  new innovations and closer collaborations among various agents to bring these innovations to life, so don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss how you can contribute to growing successful startup ecosystem in your region!

Billion dollar startups are emerging faster and faster. Given innovative startups’ critical role in the information economy, the importance of healthy startup ecosystems only stands to increase in the future, being this the reason why local, regional and national governments across the world are establishing programs to support tech entrepreneurs in an effort to stimulate economic growth and job creation.

One quite common starting point to connect, support and grow a startup ecosystem is by mapping it in order to know what is going on in the startup ecosystem, who are doing what and why, where and when are things happening or how different parties can "get in on it". Some relevant reference cases related to that are Berlin Startup Map, Mapped in Israel or Digital NYC to name a few.

However, usually in this type of cases there’s an important speed gap between the showcased information and real startup ecosystem activity that generally becomes into outdated and inaccurate information for all user roles within the startup ecosystem, generating a lot of frustration.

The main reasons behind that result are:

• Big effort to collect information (ie not all information is up to date, easy to find or publicly available to do proper mapping)
• Maintaining the correctness of the information and also to improve the quality of the information (ie. about changing programs and their availability, events and event overlaps, funding applications and requirements, services and whom those are targeted for, new startups born and existing making their pivots, new talents, etc.)

Therefore, the level of maintaining the basic information and improving quality and completeness of the information becomes "continuous effort to sustain", so more systematic and sustainable solution is eventually needed.

Countries like Vietnam are implementing digital backbone to digitally connect and visualize Vietnam startup ecosystem functions to stimulate further innovation in its emerging tech scene with the objective to collect, maintain, distribute, showcase and use vietnamese startup ecosystem information on real-time to benefit all parties involved.

This Digital Ecosystem Infrastructure solution has the architecture to connect these manual mapping efforts with systematic approach to get primary measurable data from the startup ecosystem and one key component connected to this digital infrastructure via API's is the ecosystem view module that can showcase all the information and resources of cities' digital economy in one place, visualising the pulse of startup ecosystem functions by startup development phase, location, industry, time, etc. helping people and startups find the right services and connections at the right time and also helping public & private sector decision makers and service providers target their services to the specific needs of the startups and other ecosystem actors.

​This ecosystem view provides access to tools, services and support needed to turn ideas into real businesses, including:

• Access to relevant events
• Access to relevant services (support, funding, permits, etc.)
• Access to relevant discussions and news
• Access to relevant tools assisting the company building
• Effective matching for connections, hands-on assistance, motivational support

Additionally, from local/national economic development or innovation agencies as well as supporting organizations perspective, the ecosystem view module turns the collected information into actionable knowledge to improve and redesign existing programs, services, funding schemes, etc or to create new ones as fast as possible, getting for example:

• Key volume and quality metrics
• Relative impacts between metrics of different activities/services
• Connections between actors
• “Map” to display the completeness and balance of the services and illustrate the need for new services or change of cous in overlapping services
• Compare investment to quality and quantity of outputs
• Knowledge about quality of teams and ideas
• Knowledge about customer progress and stages

​Overall, this digital ecosystem view simplifies things and makes the startup ecosystem more transparent and all parties can get more benefits from them. Additionally, by just adding startup development phases layer, it provides the right services at the right time. This alone is valuable for the future. The digital ecosystem approach is all about better access, transparency and efficiency. This, along with the statistical data that this it generates, leads to accelerated development of all areas it spreads to and effectively connects a city or country with the new digital finance world. 

In addition to the digital solution and architecture, another key component is the shared source licensing model, mainly developed for public sector constraints and known challenges, allowing them to get access to source code to give them full freedom to develop any adjustments, functionalities, new features etc. as they like either with existing or external development resources.  Parallely, as we are working globally with other cities and countries and building everything under the same technological infrastructure,whenever a city develops a new functionality, it becomes available at no cost to the rest of cities, which  drives down everyones new development associated costs. Also, there is no vendor lock, being able to keep the full software and freely continue to develop it further as independent software.

If you want to explore how this digital solution fits on top of the work you are doing now to support startups and innovation to go further with what you’ve got, then contact us to organise a workshop to take your startup ecosystem to the next level.