Indo-Finnish Workshop on built environment ecosystem

Posted on by Vishal Singh

The Aalto BIM Collaboration together with Helsinki Business Hub, Tekes and Aalto Global Impact is organizing a workshop on 6th October 2016 at Tekes (Porkkalankatu 1, 00180 Helsinki) to identify and create an Indo-Finnish business ecosystem for growth opportunities through digitalization and service-oriented thinking in built environment.

Overview

Digitalization offers new business opportunities that can rapidly grow and scale up within no time. For example, large scale systemic solutions such as AirBnB and Uber have grown into one of the largest global brands within no time, giving little space and time for traditional players in the respectively disrupted domains to adapt and respond to the challenge posed by the growth of such companies. One of the key aspects of both these and similar examples is their focus on services, which in turn comes from lateral thinking rather than large investments. Such possibilities of digitalization driven disruption cannot be ruled out across many other domains, and given that such innovation and disruption needs lateral thinking, and not necessarily huge funding, such disruption can come from unexpected quarters. Consequently, the established players across any of the traditional industries, including real estate and construction, cannot totally ignore such potential threat to their businesses, and they need to explore and prepare for potential opportunities and challenges that can come through digitalization-driven, service-oriented thinking in their respective domains at any given point of time.

Therefore, this project aims to build an ecosystem of Indo-Finnish partners who can collectively explore opportunities for mutual growth in the context of digitalization and service-oriented thinking in built environment.

The objectives are:

  1. to create a collaborative network of diverse set of actors from India and Finland who have products or services associated with the real estate and construction business, and who be part of a value chain for the targeted segment
  2. to provide a platform for the participating companies and actors to explore new market opportunities and potentially pilot new solutions and business models in their home market as well international markets
  3. to build an incubation platform supported by the ecosystem partners where novel and disruptive business models and solutions can be conceived through shared resources and at lower risk
  4. to support exchange of expertise and knowledge of complementary markets leading to further opportunities for joint ventures and long-term partnerships between interested actors

Focus areas

While the objective at this stage (Workshop, see page 2) is to allow for an open dialogue and exploration between actors broadly interested in products and services associated with built environment, the following list may serve as an indicator for the potential focus areas:

  1. Smart cities related solutions (clean technology, urban infrastructure, mobility and navigation, Health care facilities, energy management, analytics and digital services, etc)
  2. Building services (automation systems, indoor air quality, tracking- monitoring-control, security, etc)
  3. Space solutions (Housing, office and commercial, space as a service, etc)
  4. Construction management and project delivery solutions
  5. Real estate related solutions and new business models (e.g. affordable housing, co-working offices, etc)
  6. Learning and skills development related solutions
  7. Digital services, data management and resource planning

An indicative list of potential range of actors in the proposed ecosystem includes (but not limited to):

  1. Construction companies (developers, builders, designers, engineers, property owners, architects, etc)
  2. Building services companies (MEP, energy, indoor-air quality, acoustics, lighting, elevators, security, etc)
  3. Fabricators and manufacturers (precast, timber products, construction supplies, equipment, etc)
  4. Facility management companies, real estate companies, etc
  5. ICT solutions providers and software vendors (CAD, BIM, FM solutions, ERP systems, learning solutions, data management services, etc)
  6. Companies in the space of sensor-based technologies, Internet of Things, etc
  7. Logistics and supply chain
  8. Insurance and financial services
  9. Facilitators (Academic and research institutes, government agencies, funding agencies, trade associations, etc)

Immediate action plan

We are starting with a workshop on the 6th of October, 2016 to bring together the interested parties. Two parallel sessions will be simultaneously organized, one in Finland and one in India connected via a video link. More information about the workshop will be announced shortly, but the key agenda of the workshop is:

  1. To provide an overview of the proposed project: what, why, how and for whom?
  2. To explain the role of potential facilitators such as Tekes, Helsinki Business Hub, Research Universities (Aalto University, IIT Powai, IIT Chennai, etc), FinPro, and their counterparts in India
  3. To present sample project ideas with the objective to serve as trigger for brainstorming in the session to follow
  4. Break-away sessions [separate in India and Finland] for participants to brainstorm and discuss ideas and areas of interest
  5. Discussion on topics discussed and exchange across Indian and Finnish companies (look for a common ground)
  6. Recap and conclusion (with identification of the next steps)

 

Venue: Tekes, Ruoholahti, Porkkalankatu 1, Helsinki

Time: 9.00-13:00

Doodle link: http://doodle.com/poll/v5b2uh5ngncs42ye