This is a relatively interesting move and possibly a trend may follow if this picks up more momentum. A few days ago Hammerkit took to the web designers to try out their service and challenge the traditional web principles. In other words, they are trying to get a dialogue going between designers and that sort to leverage their knowledge and also market the possibilities Hammerkit has to offer them.
Hammerkit is a Finnish company based in the Techonopolis Ventures incubation pipeline. They are developing a framework for web development to leverage modules for faster web application production. With the dialogue with designers – they will be holding webcast sessions to futher untie possible knots in the co-operation and perception people may have towards their service.
This is a very wise move in my opinion for Hammerkit. I’d argue that they should be positioned more in the crowdsourcing space to tap into the knowledge of the web designers to better suit their product to their use. However, Hammerkit is not the only working in this front. A few weeks ago Nokia announced together with Technopolis a Nokia Technopolis Innovation Mill project to open up their patent registry to startups.
Nokia, together with Technopolis, will share a ton of potentially commercial innovation with a selected bunch of startups to take those innovations further. It’s only logical – while Nokia has been cutting back on investments with the economic downturn, opening up its borders in this manner is only wise.
The process goes so that Nokia will choose in co-operation with Technopolis the startups that will be able to participate in the project. So in essence, the patents and innovation will be shared with a close community of Finnish startups. The project will be nationwide and mostly present at the locations Technopolis has offices in.
The outcome of this project is a win-win-win situation for everybody and I have to say – genious. Nokia gets to see if their patents have any value in the commercial market place. Startups get good material to work on and build their business on. Technopolis gets more tenants in the form of startups in its offices.
Talouselämä (the leading weekly Finnish magazine covering the economy in Finnish) stated that one of the most notable reasons behind this move is that Nokia wants to carry out its corporate social responsibility towards the community – hail to that. However, there’s more there than meets the eye. It will be interesting to see how Nokia will share these patents to the startups – I’m supposing it won’t be giving them away for free. Licensing seems an attractive solution here and in the end – this is the point which could ruin the whole project if the terms aren’t suitable enough for the startups. I’m guessing Nokia has thought of this well and has some interesting vehicles behind this to make it a true win-win-win for everyone involved.
iWillStudy.com
Unita
Yo Antti,
Nice post and very accurate. I think we at TeVe are all humble about this project, but at the same time feel that the potential is enormous. Means that Nokia, entrepreneurs, TEKES/ cities and VCs/angels work together to find the win-win’s.
The program was over 1 year in design phase, and we went thru and simulated all the “deal killers” and bottlenecks, with lawyers, bankers, indian chiefs, etc. The result was that all of us looked around and figured out that this is not rocket science (at least the spinout part), and that it really can work.
We should see the first results in a couple months since there are several people whose mission is to grind thru Nokia’s massive IPR portfolio and selecting the first ones to come out; some may even surprise people. Will keep you posted.
Would also love for some of the companies that joined the Finland Israel Gateway mission this week to share their experiences of the Israeli Venture Association meetings (and maybe some of the aftermath ;). Canatu, Clarovision, Enfucell, Footbalance, Hammerkit,and Pegasor.
Explosion of business and pleasure, you really need to experience that environment to appreciate it — while Finland should not copy everything about Israeli ecosystem, they have the entrepreneur/ VC networking thing nailed…