Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Service sector offers growth potential and new jobs

FinnSight 2015 is a joint foresight project of Tekes and the Academy of Finland. The core of the foresight project comprised ten expert panels, each of which was composed of ten experts. The Services and Service Innovations panel of the FinnSight 2015 project identified seven focus areas of competence:

In the service sector the concept of innovation needs to be defined in broader terms so that it also takes in social innovations, such as new strategies of action, new practices and the development of practices into routines. Examples of the broad markets for service innovations are provided by household services, the impacts of immigration and regional development on the demand for services, and projects to renew public health and care services.

Service exports set to become a strength area

Finland is well placed to become a major exporter of technology services. Areas of particular strength for Finnish exports might include social services, international general purpose services as well as environmental services and technology. Services related to information security technology, information and communication systems might also provide new export opportunities for Finland. Culture and adventure services are a growing field where technology and business know-how are especially important.

Finland has every opportunity to become a model country for good housing and good living environments where all people have access to pleasant, well-tended everyday environments and related environmental services as well as solutions based on modern environmental technology. The development of better environments is a focus area that relies closely on architecture, urban and community planning and logistics.

FinnSight 2015

FinnSight 2015 is a joint foresight project of Tekes and the Academy of Finland. It examined the change factors that have impact on Finnish business and industry and on Finnish society, identified future challenges of innovation and research activity and analysed such areas of expertise which will foster the well-being in society and the competitiveness of business and industry by means of scientific research and innovation activities. The focus in foresight was on social and global issues.

Foresight will lay the foundation for new internationally competitive centres of excellence and expertise clusters. Simultaneously, foresight will reinforce strategy work at the Academy of Finland and Tekes.

The core of the foresight project comprised ten expert panels, each of which was composed of ten experts. The areas that emerged most prominently were the management of global risks, energy and environment issues, the renewal of the health care system as well as ICT and biosciences applications.

Eeva Ahola | alfa
Further information:
http://www.finnsight2015.fi/
http://www.tekes.fi

Im Focus: AchemAsia 2019 will take place in Shanghai

Moving into its fourth decade, AchemAsia is setting out for new horizons: The International Expo and Innovation Forum for Sustainable Chemical Production will take place from 21-23 May 2019 in Shanghai, China. With an updated event profile, the eleventh edition focusses on topics that are especially relevant for the Chinese process industry, putting a strong emphasis on sustainability and innovation.

Founded in 1989 as a spin-off of ACHEMA to cater to the needs of China’s then developing industry, AchemAsia has since grown into a platform where the latest...

Im Focus: First real-time test of Li-Fi utilization for the industrial Internet of Things

The BMBF-funded OWICELLS project was successfully completed with a final presentation at the BMW plant in Munich. The presentation demonstrated a Li-Fi communication with a mobile robot, while the robot carried out usual production processes (welding, moving and testing parts) in a 5x5m² production cell. The robust, optical wireless transmission is based on spatial diversity; in other words, data is sent and received simultaneously by several LEDs and several photodiodes. The system can transmit data at more than 100 Mbit/s and five milliseconds latency.

Modern production technologies in the automobile industry must become more flexible in order to fulfil individual customer requirements.

Im Focus: Sharp images with flexible fibers

An international team of scientists has discovered a new way to transfer image information through multimodal fibers with almost no distortion - even if the fiber is bent. The results of the study, to which scientist from the Leibniz-Institute of Photonic Technology Jena (Leibniz IPHT) contributed, were published on 6thJune in the highly-cited journal Physical Review Letters.

Endoscopes allow doctors to see into a patient’s body like through a keyhole. Typically, the images are transmitted via a bundle of several hundreds of optical...

Im Focus: Photoexcited graphene puzzle solved

A boost for graphene-based light detectors

Light detection and control lies at the heart of many modern device applications, such as smartphone cameras. Using graphene as a light-sensitive material for...

Im Focus: Water is not the same as water

Water molecules exist in two different forms with almost identical physical properties. For the first time, researchers have succeeded in separating the two forms to show that they can exhibit different chemical reactivities. These results were reported by researchers from the University of Basel and their colleagues in Hamburg in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

From a chemical perspective, water is a molecule in which a single oxygen atom is linked to two hydrogen atoms. It is less well known that water exists in two...