Industryhack was started in 2014 to speed up the digital renewal of the traditional industries in Finland. In a few years, it grew to become one of the biggest co-creation programs in the Nordics. So far, Industryhack has brought together 40 industrial companies and 10 public organisations with a com- munity of more than 3000 solvers to create nearly 500 concepts, 80 proof of concept projects and 40 new solutions. This book collects some of the stories along the way, and measures the impact made so far.

1. 1
A little book
about Industryhack
Stories and impact from our
first five years 2014-2019
1st edition, 2019

2. 4 5
Table of contents
Foreword
Executive summary
Our story
Customer stories
Solver stories
Our impact
Thank yous
5
6
8
32
60
86
99

3. 6 7
Industryhack was founded on the principle to take
action, instead of just talking or telling others to do
something. Let’s build something and figure out the rest
later. Build, measure, learn, repeat. In this order.
Five years ago, we got tired of the everlasting talk
about the need for renewal of the Finnish industry.
Instead, we started to build something that would
become the change. We didn’t have any experience in
working in or with industrial companies, but we knew
startups, and the way to build fast, and wanted to bring
this culture and mindset to traditional industries. We
decided to ask hundreds of people to join us and spend
a few days to build, experiment and try to find ways to
solve the biggest challenges the industry was facing.
After five years of building, we wanted to take some
time to measure the results of our work. We looked at
the numbers, reviewed feedback being collected, and
interviewed lots of people we have worked with and
found out the biggest impacts we have made. That’s
why we wrote this little book to share our findings.
We have set our mission to help people solve big
challenges together, and now looking back, we have
learned a lot on how to make that happen. The name,
Industryhack, originates from the ambition to find
creative solutions that can change entire industries.
Hacking means creative problem-solving. When the
answer is not obvious, building experiments is the
best way to learn and move ahead. Today, our world is
facing big challenges, such as climate change, and it’s
more important now than ever that all industries find
creative new solutions to renew themselves.
This journey is 1% finished. In the future, Industryhack
will lead the way in many new fronts, helping corpora-
tions, solvers and governments solve big challenges
together. Build, measure, learn, repeat. Now, it’s time to
build the next chapter.
Petri Vilén
Founder of Industryhack
CEO 2015-2019, Chairman of the board 2019-
Build first, measure, and learn
to make an even better impact
kuva Petristä
Petri telling the story of Industryhack in Norrsken House, Stockholm (Photo by Elias Ljungberg)

4. 8 9
Executive Summary
Industryhack was started in 2014 to contribute to the
digital renewal of the Finnish industry. It’s original goal
was to organise 10 hackathons during one year, cre-
ating 150 experiments in the field of industrial internet.
The program grew to become a company, that has de-
veloped the co-creation concept further and has so far
organised over 60 innovation challenges with nearly
40 industrial companies and 10 public organisations.
In the innovation challenges, external solvers have
co-created solutions to the challenges given by the
host companies. The hosts are mostly from the top
200 largest companies in Finland. In a typical chal-
lenge, 8 teams of 2-3 people have been invited to
visit the host, understand the business environment
and mentored to develop a solution over a 2-3 days
co-creation event. The best teams have been selected
to work on a proof-of-concept project.
After five years since the founding, Industryhack has
collected learnings and impact from the work so far. In
this report, the biggest impact can be summarised in 5
key points.
1. New business opportunities for SMEs
A total of 89 contracts for proof-of-concept projects
2. A total of 39 new solutions
Projects continued by our customers after finnishing
the proof of concept project
3. Fairer terms and faster collaboration
Standard contracts for innovation challenges and
small projects published
4. Contribution to the renewal of the public sector
Applying the innovation challenge model to the new
EU-wide public procurement law
5. Contribution to the renewal of Finnish industry
Speeding up culture change in the largest companies
in Finland and matching them with half of the Finnish
software industry
1141
Teams have applied
to challenges
464
Number of concepts
built in the challenges
79
Proof of concept
projects done*
Airbus
Business Finland
Caruna
City of Helsinki
City of Tampere
DENSO
Fastems
Fazer
Fingrid
Finnsementti
FinTech Global Inc.
Fiskars
Fortum
Gasum
Helen
Hiab
K-Group
KEHA-keskus
Kemira
KONE
Konecranes
Lassila & Tikanoja
LeinoCast
Lemminkäinen
Maanmittauslaitos
MacGregor
Mandatum Life
Martela
Metsähallitus
Nokia
OKM
Ponsse
Rolls-Royce
Siemens
Snellman Pro
Stara
Stora Enso
TallinkSilja
UPM
Valio
Veho
VTT
YIT
Yleisradio
Yliopiston Apteekki
Åland Government
39
Solutions continued
after proof of concept*
Key numbers (by August 2019)
Total 60 challenges hosted by
* These numbers have been confirmed by August 2019. These numbers
may increase after future followups on the latest challenges.

5. 10 11
1. Our story

6. 12 13
“Why don’t you open your
doors for a bus full of coders?”
Industryhack was started in the fall of 2014 at a round
table discussion organised to come up with ideas to
help the renewal of the Finnish industry and increase
the awareness and business activity in the field of the
industrial internet. Around the table, there were people
from universities, government innovation and funding
agencies, and Konecranes, the company that had been
promoting industrial internet to become one of the key
growth industries in Finland.
Petri Vilén, representing Slush at the time, challenged
Konecranes to open their doors and APIs, invite a bus
full of coders to their facilities and work with them over
a weekend in a hackathon. The new CDO for Kone-
cranes, Juha Pankakoski, took this challenge to heart
and agreed to be the host if Petri would organise the
event.
This marked the starting point for Industryhack. The
first application campaign to participate Konecranes
hackathon was launched during Slush 2014. Indus-
tryhack was planned to be a co-creation program
that aims to create 150 experiments in 10 hackathons
during 12 months. Co-founders Pekka Sivonen, Mikael
Hautala and Ville Riikkala joined the team to make this
happen.
Following the example set by Konecranes, other com-
panies were also encouraged and started to reach out
to us to host hackathons. Fastems, Iittala, Lassila & Ti-
kanoja, Gasum, Fortum, and Nokia all hosted Industry-
hack hackathons in 2015. By the end of the year, other
hackathon organisers also started to appear, as mas-
sive events like Junction, Ultrahack and AEC Hack-
athon were organised during Slush 2015. To achieve
the goal of 150 experiments, it took us a bit more than
12 months, as we reached the count at the end of the
13th month after working with TallinkSilja, Veho, KONE,
and Ponsse. During 2015, the work for Industryhack
had been a side hobby for our founders, but by the end
of the year, Mikael, Petri, and Ville jumped full-time to
work for Industryhack. Since then, the company has
grown year by year, and in 2018 generated a turnover
of 1,2 million euros with a staff of 12 people.
In the beginning, the basic concept was inspired by
hackathons but with a twist to it. The host company
publishes its challenge on the Industryhack platform
and opens it for applications. The host reviews the
applications and selects the best teams to join the
contest. A typical hackathon lasts for 3 days. A visit to
a site, access to resources throughout the event. Men-
tors helping to introduce the business and tools, and
The first bus full of coders arriving at Konecranes HQ in Hyvinkää, Finland on February 6th, 2015

7. 14 15
Introduction to the cranes the solvers get access to at the Konecranes
R&D site in Hyvinkää, Finland. The cranes are called Doris and Kyllikki.

8. 16 17
coaches to help with developing the concept and pitch.
The event ends in a jury session, where teams present
their concepts to a jury, typically consisting of directors
of the host company.
Industryhack started with hackathons, but the focus
quickly shifted towards more long-term development.
It was decided that the company hosting the challenge
and the team taking part in it, should by default commit
to more long-term collaboration than the two-day
event.
This led to concrete changes in Industryhack’s chal-
lenge process. Teams taking part in the challenge
would receive compensation for participating and
would be obliged to be tied to a legal entity e.g. a
company. Moreover, the companies hosting the chal-
lenges started to mentor the teams and committed to
proceeding to proof-of-concept projects with the best
teams, instead of fixed prizes. The PoC project would
focus on validating the solution idea presented in the
challenge in practice.
This new process quickly proved beneficial but brought
light to minor and major challenges in starting up and
completing new PoC projects. A more holistic view of
the projects was required in order to understand the
nature of successful ones. Additionally, learning how to
facilitate them in a way that created stronger collabo-
ration between the partner companies, from the start of
the PoC to the end, was deemed important.
Industryhack has also received several awards for the
work for the Finnish industry. In 2016, the company
was named as the Service Act of the year 2016 by
the Finnish Service Alliance. In the same year, we also
won the Blue Arrow Award, a competition organised
by Better Digital Services Finland, an association with
the mission to raise the standard of digital services in
Finland. The main judge Jarkko Oikarinen, the inventor
of IRC, stated as follows:
“Industryhack events are an excellent idea to bring
more innovation into more traditional industrial compa-
nies, by connecting hackers and industry. Industryhack
events have impressive and diverse activities in various
fields. They have demonstrated nationwide success
and high impact in driving innovation and boosting R&D
work in several companies. These events have required
a tremendous amount of work, in influencing large
industrial companies and organizing actual events, en-
suring their success. Absolutely impressive and diverse
set of activities in various fields. Uniting and powerful
act. Nationwide success: these people have been able
to get attention from big organizations and keeping the
events coming time after time despite very hard work
required. Very good impact.”
In 2017, Industryhack received the Technology Award
2017, as the Finnish Foundation for Technology Promo-
tion and Technology Industries of Finland Centennial
Foundation announced a special award during the
centennial celebration of Finland. The award was given
to three organizations with a total prize of 100 000
euros. The jury’s chairman Yrjö Neuvo declared: “The
award winners provide two important viewpoints to the
advancement of Finnish competitiveness. These are
utilising the latest technologies in traditional industries
and strengthening the startup mentality”.
Kristian Ovaska presenting their machine learning solution that ended up winning the first challenge.

9. 18 19
Solvers in safety jackets, getting to know various industrial environments.
On the left: Lassila & Tikanoja recycling site, Konecranes R&D site. Above: UPM’s papermill.
Next page: Lemminkäinen factory tour, Fortum’s power plant and Ponsse products in the forest.

10. 20 21

11. 22 23
The jury sessions are always intensive, as teams have only 10 minutes to convince the jury they
should continue with a project. Ekaterina Gilman presenting her team’s concept to Stara jury.

12. 24 25
Eating together has always been at a key role at Industryhack events. Over joint dinners, host
companies and solvers have the chance to share ideas and discuss in a relaxed atmosphere.

13. 26 27
Figuring out how to make proof
of concept projects run smoother
Our mission is to help people solve big challenges
together. Therefore, even though the number of trials is
an important metric, the true success of open innova-
tion can only be measured by the number of completed
projects and the results they bring. We felt there were
some problems in taking collaboration projects further
to proofs-of-concept or pilot projects.
We decided to investigate the results and PoC pro-
jects from 2017. We selected 16 challenges from 2017
to the study and interviewed 35 people from both sides
of the table to build an understanding of a total of 30
projects. We wanted to understand the current phase
of the PoC project, timeline, means of communication,
contracts between the parties, budgets, and resourc-
ing, and which parts of the project could have needed
more help.
This study gave a really good overview of the problems
there may occur in establishing innovation partner-
ships. As a result of the study, we decided to implement
development projects and changes in our operations
1. To speed up open innovation experiments and
proofs-of-concept, we decided to create light standard
agreements in collaboration with our customers, com-
munity and legal advisors
2. To manage both our customers and participating
teams’ expectations, we decided to improve a new
standard for the call for applications, that includes
schedules and resources for the proof-of-concept
phase and also the terms and budgeting of the poten-
tially following collaboration
3. To ensure customers’ timely decisions, we brought
clear accountability and decision-making deadlines to
the challenge process, and actively strive to make sure
they are met
4. To manage the PoC projects better we decided to
create a validation program
In addition to these, it was fair to say that conducting
this study helped us take our operations significantly
further, and thus we decided to form a permanent tradi-
tion to follow up on the outcomes of our work annually
in impact reports like this.
Vinh Vo demoing their solution to the Stara mentors.

14. 28 29
Designing better terms for
open innovation challenges
One of the key findings in our research on proof-of-con-
cept projects was that it took on average 4,5 months to
negotiate an agreement for a 1-2 month project between
a large corporation and a small company. We saw this
as a big blocker for collaboration, which makes compa-
nies minimize risks and altogether avoid taking on these
kinds of initiatives. We had a vision of standardised
terms for open innovation contests that include the path
to PoCs, and which are easy to understand and accept
for both sides of the table.
This idea was also supported by the Rising North fund
that aided us with the development of standard terms.
We started discussing about the possibility to devel-
op standard terms with several legal companies, and
selected Dottir Attorneys as the best partner for this
because of their previous experience with Series Seed
terms and legal design approach, an inclusive process
aimed for legal documents that are visual and easy to
understand.
We took together contracts that our dozens of corpo-
rate customers have used for short-term PoC projects
and organised workshops with Dottir to build a common
understanding of the legal landscape. We planned
the overall structure of the terms and what topics they
should cover, like IPR, confidentiality, timelines, and pay-
ments. In September 2018, we organised workshops in
which we introduced the terms and collected feedback
from both sides of the table. We had invited over 40
participants from big companies, startups and tech com-
panies, and industry associations such as Technology
Industries Finland and Business Finland.
Based on the feedback collected in these workshops
and online, we iterated the documents and shared them
on our website. During October and November, we
promoted the terms and collected feedback. Since then,
we have implemented the terms in our open innovation
challenges and shared them for public use by compet-
itors and corporates. We have also developed them
based on the feedback and how they work in real cases
to become even more suitable in future contests.
Petri Vilén presenting General Terms at Open Innovation Meetup (Photo by Elias Ljungberg)

15. 30 31
Building the Nordics as a single
market for Open Innovation
We have been organizing lots of various events for our
community and customers during the years. At the
beginning of 2018, we wanted to start a series of events
to promote the opportunities in open innovation, and
most of all, tell real-life stories of collaboration. The idea
of Open Innovation Meetups was to bring people from
corporations and local startups together to network
and hear stories of successful or failed real-life cases on
startup-corporate collaboration. We thought that these
events could also be taken out of Helsinki, where we
operated, to promote the movement.
In our work with big companies’ open innovation activ-
ities, we have seen that Nordic corporations look after
startup partnerships either from the domestic markets
or then reach out to startup hotspots in Silicon Valley,
Israel or Asia. Very few consider Nordics and Northern
Europe as a hotspot for partners, even though there is
clear evidence that it’s comparable and as innovative
as the other hotspots. We wanted to change this, and
start to bring companies closer together and see Nor-
dics as a single market for open innovation.
We decided to organize a tour in the Nordic cities,
supported by a grant from the Rising North fund. We
had a total of six events during the tour: in Helsinki
(October 4th, 2018 in Maria 01), Oslo (October 11th,
2018 in MESH), Stockholm (October 18th, 2018 at the
Norrsken House), Copenhagen (October 25th, 2018 at
Matrikel1), Tallinn (November 23rd, 2018 at Workland
with Startup Estonia) and again in Helsinki (December
4th, 2018 during the Slush week). The tour was a huge
success. Together, the events had a total of 680 reg-
istered participants, out of which more than 150 were
from big corporations.
Right: Full house at the meetup in Norrsken House, Stockholm (Photo by Elias Ljungberg)

16. 32 33
Developing better public services
with open innovation challenges
In 2016, we did our first challenge with a public sector
organisation, when Tekes (now known as Business
Finland) asked us if the open innovation process could
be used to support public procurement of a software
solution. This resulted in TekesHack challenge, in which
we were looking for a partner for Tekes to build a ma-
chine learning solution to help them make connections
and cluster the 10 000 funded projects for investors.
In the beginning of 2017, a new EU directive and pro-
curement law came into force, enabling more innovative
procurement and the use of experimentation as a tool
to make better procurement decisions. We started to
work with several public sector customers, and at the
end of 2018, we decided to invest in the development of
seamless integration of our process to match the legal
requirements of the new law, so that innovation chal-
lenges could be used as a tool for public procurement.
Since then, we have worked together with customers
such as Aalto University, Åland Government, Cities of
Helsinki and Tampere, Metsähallitus, Maanmittauslai-
tos, and Yle, to help them buy innovative solutions.
We believe that this is a huge and important step to
make better use of taxpayers’ money. Instead of buying
a pre-defined execution, the public sector can find the
best solutions to solve a real-life challenge. The new
government led by prime minister Antti Rinne, set a
goal to increase the share of innovative public procure-
ment up to 10% of all purchases, generating an annual
budget of 3,5 billion euros for co-creation with startups,
SMEs and innovative big companies. We believe there
is a big opportunity here to direct these investments to
make big bets in the Finnish ecosystem.
City of Helsinki’s maintenance company Stara was looking for better solutions for street maintenance work.

17. 34 35
2. Customer stories

18. 36 37
Welcome to the Internet
of Really Big Things
There is an African proverb that says “If you want to go
fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This
saying goes along well with the opportunities arising in
transforming traditional industries, and requires a new
mindset from entrepreneurs and large companies.
Currently, we have seen a relatively long period of
slow growth in the economy, and are on the verge of
an era that the World Economic Forum calls the fourth
industrial revolution. According to the Forum, it will be
created by closing the gaps between digital, physical
and biological systems. This change is accelerated by
technologies such as cloud computing, machine learn-
ing, sensor networks, internet of things, 3D printing, just
to name a few; combined with advancements in biol-
ogy and material sciences. What the Forum suggests
is that traditional and dominant industries like energy,
healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, housing,
food and retail will be facing the biggest transformation
since their early days.
The Internet of Really Big Things will change the rules
of the game. Jeff Immelt, former CEO of one of the
world’s biggest industrial companies, General Electric,
stated that people who deny that digitalization will
impact every corner of the society are going to get
left behind, and in the coming years every industrial
company will have to become a software and analyt-
ics company. Furthermore, Michael Porter stated that
smart, connected products are changing the nature of
competition and expose companies to completely new
competitive opportunities and threats. This change is
reshaping industry boundaries and creating entirely
new industries, forcing companies to ask themselves
“What business are we in?”
Companies will have to make new strategic choices
related to how value is created and captured, how the
data they generate is utilized and managed, and how
relationships with traditional business partners like
distribution channels are redefined. Porter noted that
what makes smart, connected products fundamentally
different is not the connectivity itself, but the changing
nature of the things themselves. As an example, Rolls-
Royce has been building aero engines already for more
than 100 years, so they know pretty well how to bash
Solvers learning about maritime industry at the Port of Helsinki

19. 38 39
steel into blades and turn petrol into power. But in ad-
dition to this, they have been pioneers in transforming
themselves into a big data driven service company.
An entrepreneur might ask, what are the opportunities
for startups in the Internet of Really Big Things? The
assets are in many cases worth hundreds of millions,
and disrupting the scene sounds like a big and risky
task, compared to starting an agile app company. The
keyword here is collaboration, because large compa-
nies can’t be the ones to do the transformation just by
themselves.
Accenture stated in 2015 that corporate innovation
doesn’t work, mostly because large companies are still
too slow to move and change their working practices.
Just throwing money at innovation schemes won’t
mean they will be successful. According to Accenture’s
research on open innovation, corporate innovation, ac-
celerators, and venture capital schemes are not always
the best approaches for large companies in old indus-
tries. Instead, the study suggests that joint innovation
and co-creation with more agile partners will be trend-
ing in the near future. The study shows that 80 percent
of corporates want to collaborate with startups.
It’s clear that we are on the verge of big things, and will
see dramatic movements in the traditional industries.
This will also require new mindset from the entrepre-
neurs and investors entering the scene. One of the
pioneers of internet infrastructure, AOL’s founder and
former CEO Steve Case calls this the third wave of in-
ternet companies. The first wave of internet companies,
like Cisco, Apple, AOL and Sun Microsystems, built the
infrastructure for the web. The second wave was driven
by web services, app economy and mobile revolution,
bringing up companies like Facebook, Twitter and
Google. This wave was in big parts enabled by people,
focus on good products, and platforms that helped to
scale these companies almost overnight.
Steve Case suggests that in the third wave, the
requirements for companies are different: in addition
to having great people, products and platforms, these
companies need more focus on building partnerships,
policy-making, and lots of perseverance. Entrepre-
neurs will have great opportunities to transform major,
real-world industries, and impact billions of people’s
lives. But making the change will require a new mindset,
long-term vision, patience, public-private partnerships,
and collaboration between the giants and the agile
ones. The era of the Internet of Really Big Things will
take us far, and it’s better to take that journey together.
We have had the opportunity to work together with
some of the largest companies in the Nordics. So far,
we have worked with 37 companies in traditional indus-
tries. It has been inspiring to help some of the oldest
companies in the world, like Stora Enso (founded 1288)
or Fiskars (1649), in their aim to find the next chapter.
Here we share some of their stories.
Some examples of the challenges
Hack The Glass with Iittala
Make smart home also a beautiful
experience (May 2015)
Hack the Maintenance with Konecranes
Develop preventive maintenance
solutions (Sep 2015)
Hack the Turbine with Fortum
Prevent downtime on a hydro power
plant (May 2016)
Hack the Sea with MacGregor
Increase safety for vessel workers
at seas and harbors (Nov 2016)
Hack the Waste with L&T
Predict market and managing material flow
of wood chips (Nov 2016)
Maritime Hack with Rolls-Royce
Develop remote control systems for
autonomous vessels (Nov 2016)
Hack the Living with YIT
Develop better living services for
YIT home owners (Jan 2017)
InfraHack with Lemminkäinen
Make information flows work better
at construction sites (May 2017)
Time for Elevation with Hiab
Make load handling process easier
and safer (Sep 2017)
More Time for Work with K-Group
Improve real-time information during
a construction project (Nov 2017)
Flexible Energy with UPM
Adjust papermill production based on
availability of renewables (Nov 2017)
Better Working with Martela
Develop better office environments
based on real-time data (Jun 2018)
What’s Cooking with Snellman Pro
New ways to offer added value to
professional customers (May 2018)
Buddy power with Caruna
Create local communities for small
energy producers (Nov 2018)
Digital Buildings with Siemens
Develop better services on digital
twin of buildings (Dec 2018)

20. 40 41
Teams on a tour at the Konecranes factory

21. 42 43
Teams got to see how glass objects like Toikka
birds are hand-made at the Iiittala factory tour

22. 44 45
On a tour at the UPM’s Jämsänkoski papermill

23. 46 47
Fingrid is Finland’s power grid system operator. They
wanted to find solutions to help manage the grid in a
world, where energy production becomes more frag-
mented. We partnered with them in the fall of 2017 to
co-create and experiment new solutions with innova-
tive partners.
The challenge was divided into two themes. First
theme seeked solutions for new, agile, functional, safe
and reasonably-priced way of transferring information
from the electrical system to Fingrid. Second theme
focused on analysis and forecasting eg. production
capacity one week ahead or optimizing backup-power
amount and usability in different at different times.
Four solutions were taken to the pilot phase, which
started in the beginning of 2018. One of the solutions
helped forecasting electricity consumption, wind
power production and thermal power generation using
machine learning based model. Another solution for
Fingrid was interface and a tool which visually pre-
sents and collect data from multiple parties. One of
the solutions was built for real time information flow of
technical data transmission on the electricity network.
The fourth solution selected to pilot was a forecast tool
for production capacity for the coming week. Three of
the solutions were continued for implementation after
the proof of concept.
Fingrid’s Development Manager Jonne Jäppinen:
Important factor is, that in addition to the actual results
we got important experience of new, agile and inno-
vative operating model of working. Open innovation
challenge suited perfectly to our current situation, as
we did not know the best way of solving our challenges
ourselves and traditional procurement model couldn’t
be implemented.
Customer Highlight: Fingrid
Three solutions for better flow
of information and forecasting
Group photo from the Fingrid challenge

24. 48 49
Helsinki City Construction Services, Stara, is a versa-
tile expert in the fields of construction, environmental
management and logistics. Their 1,500 employees
take care of Helsinki.
Industryhack has worked with Stara on several chal-
lenges. The first of them, StreetReboot, was organised
in late 2017. Stara wanted to test solutions IoT based
solutions that improve the planning and managing of
city maintenance services. One of the solutions helps
inform people before their car will be removed during
street cleaning, while saving time and transportation
costs for the city. Stara piloted the solution in one
part of the city. It was greatly successful, reducing the
need to move cars by 95%, and demonstrated that the
solution can help the city save costs by nearly a million
euros when implemented city-wide.
After the successful first challenge, the second chal-
lenge This Is Snow Problem was organised in Novem-
ber 2018, finding solutions to recycle snow during
snowy winters in Helsinki. Four solutions were piloted,
two of which will be implemented in winter 2020.
Sami Aherva, Director Of Logistics at Stara
During the challenge, I realized that for the first time
employees had a chance to effect the tool the team
uses. Before, the tools have been just given. Now they
got the opportunity to guide the development as part of
the professional team and build a tool for themselves.
Our mentors gave feedback that these were the best
workdays ever. This is something that I had never expe-
rienced during my career.
As a result of the first challenge, we got four proof-of-
concept projects and two of the solutions are in use to-
day. SiirtoSoitto is a service that makes an automated
call to a car owner if the car is in a transfer request area
and the maintenance work is about to start. If the car
owner act quickly, the transfer fee can be avoided. An-
other solution that is in use is an application for the city
maintenance, called Apuri. It gives recommendations
in real time about in which order the streets should be
taken care of. With Apuri same routes won’t be driven
through twice, therefore time and resources are being
saved, when routes can be planned.
Customer Highlight: Stara
Two new solutions for better
street maintenance in Helsinki
Photo: Sami Aherva talking with solvers at the StreetReboot camp

25. 50 51
Solvers getting to know Stara’s city maintenance fleet.

26. 52 53
Customer Highlight: TallinkSilja
Kickstarting the culture of
fast experimentation
TallinkSilja’s Håkan Fagerström shows solvers the ship’s bridge
Hack the Ship challenge with the Nordic’s leading
cruising company TallinkSilja was organized in Feb-
ruary 2016. The challenge was really interesting, and
it still holds the record amount of applications to any
Industryhack challenge. The co-development camp
was organised on a cruise ship and in Tallinn.
TallinkSilja wanted to develop services that improve
cruise passenger’s customer experience and create
new sales opportunities with the latest technology
in the new ship Megastar, which the company was
launching soon after the challenge. The solvers also
got access to information and resources which are not
publicly available.
Margus Schults, CEO of TallinkSilja
The challenge with Industryhack was an eye opening
experience. We got familiar with a lot of new potential
partners and continued to work with one of them on our
digital journey. Yet, the most important value for us was
the cultural change we got in our organisation.
In large organisations development is typically slow
and expensive. We were able to demonstrate to our
whole organisation that it’s possible to do a lot of fast
experiments and develop customer focused solutions
in an agile way. Usually development projects can take
several months, but this challenge showed it is possi-
ble to build a prototype in just two days. This custom-
er focused approach and agile way of working that
Industryhack represents, affected strongly the way we
do business development and IT.

27. 54 55
Veho is Finland’s largest automobile retail and main-
tenance company. The company opened a new
Mercedes-Benz flagship store in spring 2016, and
wanted to find better solutions to serve customers in
the maintenance process. They opened the doors to
the new store before it publicly opened, providing open
access to the maintenance facilities to build and test
new concepts.
Veho seeked solutions to improve the customer expe-
rience of car maintenance. Communicating to the cus-
tomer about the process of a car maintenance hasn’t
changed noticeably throughout the years, therefore
the process needed an update. They also wanted to
show Veho’s employees that innovation and interdisci-
plinary thinking is not just allowed, but also desired.
Veho started two proof of concept projects during the
challenge. One of them resulted in Veho buying the
technology rights for a customer analytics solutions,
and the other customer service concept was imple-
mented to Veho nationwide.
Hannu Harjula, CIO of Veho
“We implemented this simple application that enables
communication with the client at different stages of car
maintenance. If a need for additional work occurs, client
can be informed efficiently. Seems very simple, but with
the car industry being very traditional, this was a very
revolutionary thing.”
“Industryhack had the knowhow and ready concept
for this kind of challenges. They brought the proficien-
cy and how to set the scope. Industryhack has a vast
network of solvers, where the teams and right people
for our challenge were found.”
“This challenge also had a strong impact internally
in our organisation and affected our cultural change.
In addition, we reached audience that we wouldn’t
normally reach. Another important factor was shaping
our brand and image from the traditional automotive
industry.”
Customer Highlight: Veho
Revolutionary customer service
while refreshing brand
Veho’s jury presentations were held at the garage.

28. 56 57
Lassila & Tikanoja (L&T) is Finland’s leading services
company in recycling and building maintenance servic-
es. The first challenge, Hack the Recycling was organ-
ized with L&T in 2015. Since then, we have partnered
with L&T on two other challenges focused in building
maintenance services and wood recycling. The goal of
the challenges has been to find new ideas and services
to help their customers in recycling and making their
life easier.
One of the solutions, Helpponouto, became a new
business for L&T. Idea behind the solution was to batch
together waste pickups from homes close to each oth-
er, and offer cheaper costs for people to recycle haz-
ardous waste. Sort of Uber for hazardous waste. The
solution has become an important new business for
Lassila & Tikanoja, and it has also generated a flux of
other services for consumers under the Helppo brand.
Ville Simola, former head of digital innovations
We have worked with Industryhack on several chal-
lenges. Our primary goal was to change the company
culture, we wanted to facilitate new ways of doing
things. The second goal was to find out these new ideas
and new perspectives into our challenges. Third one
was data aspect, we wanted to explore what kind of
different ways we could utilize the existing data that we
have.
For us, the biggest benefit was the cultural change.
With Industryhack, we got a really good kickstart for
this new way of doing things. The concrete part was the
actual service that has become a new business for us.
It turned out to be a service that helps our customers
very easily to get rid of their old items and handle the
recycling. Together with this, we found several other
concepts for internal efficiency that we have piloted
with partners and taken into use.
Customer Highlight: Lassila & Tikanoja
Starting a growing consumer
business from the challenge
SC5’s team developed the concept that became Helpponouto sercice

29. 58 59
Finnsementti is part of the global construction ma-
terials company CRH that has an annual turnover of
26 billion euros. Finnsementti has a massive cement
manufacturing plant in Parainen. In their challenge in
2018, they wanted to find solutions for improving main-
tenance operations and how to get more use out of the
data that is being collected at the plant.
One of the solver companies, Fidera, connected the
data from 2000 existing sensors and brought mova-
ble sensors that monitor the cement kiln’s conditions
around the clock. The solution helps to detect any
deviations from normal data and prevents unexpect-
ed downtime, thus saving huge costs and prolonging
the use time of the kiln with several decades. After the
successful pilot, Fidera and Finnsementti have contin-
ued to develop new machine learning based solutions
in the plant.
Tommy Ranta, Plant Manager of Finnsementti
As a result of this challenge, we started a project with
a new partner to build a maintenance system that en-
ables real time tracking of our cement kiln. By noticing
deviations in the data, equipment breakdowns can be
predicted and prevented, and expensive production
stops will be avoided.
I have told many people, that without Industryhack,
we wouldn’t have found these potential partners and
they wouldn’t have found us. Without this challenge
we would never have started working with these small
companies and we wouldn’t even know this kind of
opportunities exists. I would definitely recommend
Industryhack. We learned how agile startups are. Large
actors in our industry are usually everything but agile.
More companies should test this kind of model.
Customer Highlight: Finnsementti
Keeping the machines running
for several decades longer

30. 60 61
Harri Koskinen tries a lamp of his design that Arjun Kamath and his team modified.L&T’s Joonas Ronkainen explaining Rajesh Kumar how the ticket system works.

31. 62 63
3. Solver stories

32. 64 65
Solving big challenges together
with the community of solvers
From the very beginning, the core of Industryhack has
been the active community of solvers. We have built
and maintained our active connection to the solver
community by providing good opportunities, organizing
community gatherings and by making sure they are
treated well and fair at the innovation challenges and
further collaboration with corporates.
At an early stage we set a requirement that solver
teams represent a company which made collaboration
after the challenge a lot easier. Most of the solvers
come from small and medium sized companies, typi-
cally ranging from two-person startups to 50+ software
agencies. Some of the big IT consultancies, like Tieto,
CGI and Cybercom, have also been actively participat-
ing in the challenges. In total, we have had teams from
more than 700 different companies. Solvers have reg-
istered to our platform from 47 countries, most of them
from Finland, Nordics, Baltics, Germany, and Russia.
Creative people, like software developers and de-
signers, are hungry for problem-solving and tough
challenges - the kind they may not get to work with in
their daily work too often. Innovation challenges offer a
refreshing way to get their minds on wicked challenges,
learning new industries and experimenting new tech-
nologies. Having the chance to use 2 or 3 days working
on just one thing is also nowadays a luxury – innova-
tion challenge offer this opportunity.
Solvers often have deep knowledge and all the meth-
odologies for innovating, but they crave for actual,
real-life problems they can solve. Industrial companies
can offer these and innovation challenges are a way to
do it easily.
Our motto has been to treat solvers like royals, be-
cause they are the stars. We started measuring Net
Promoter Score In our challenges since the end of
2017, and so far our average NPS has been 75. Even 70
is considered world-class, so we can honestly say we
stand by the royals.
Antti Kulpakko sharing his insight at the Industryhack Community Day in June 2016

33. 66 67

34. 70 71
Industryhack’s community day in 2016 at the Sinebrychoff mansion. Jussi Saarijoki sharing his ideas to everyone.

35. 72 73
Perfektio is a product design and development agency
that represents a new kind of business model in the
software industry – their sales and ways of working are
based on open innovation. The company has grown
to nearly 20 people in just a few years. Perfektio has
participated in over 60 open innovation challenges
globally, 20 of which have been organized by Industry-
hack. They also maintain an active network of creative
people who they invite as part of their own teams to
participate in challenges.
Henri Malkki, Co-founder and CEO of Perfektio
Participating in open innovation challenges has
improved our team’s problem solving skills and capa-
bilities to develop new concepts and ideas. Our whole
personnel has taken part in some challenges, which
means that they can also take these skills to other
projects as well.
Another impact is that we have clarified our brand
towards open innovation and our business model has
been built on it. We have been able to use our active
participation and the successes from the challenges as
part of our sales story. It has been effective especially in
the beginning of negotiations.
There have been problems with how open innovation
works between large and small companies, but Indus-
tryhack has clearly taken it into a healthier direction.
There are now clearer rules and small startups can feel
that it is a fair game. Also, Industryhack is taking the
agenda of innovative public procurement enabled by
the new public procurement law forward. It is in the first
steps for everyone, but Industryhack has done a good
job, which can be seen when talking with people on
public sector.
Photo: Perfektio’s team at Hiab’s challenge in Hudiksvall, Sweden.
Solver Highlight: Perfektio
Software company built on
open innovation challenges

36. 74 75
VXT Research is a company that builds their own ma-
chine learning engine. The company got started when
two researchers, Vincent Kuo and Tapio Auvinen took
part in the TekesHack, in which Business Finland was
looking for machine learning solutions to improve their
matchmaking of research groups, startups and inves-
tors. The partnership has resulted in Business Finland
Connection, a tool that is used by 500 employees
in the organization to help their work in background
research of funding and matchmaking.
Vincent Kuo, Co-founder and CEO of VXT Research
What drove us to apply to TekesHack was to explore in-
novation funding other than through research institutes,
and to utilize research outputs in ambitious real-world
applications. My partner, Tapio Auvinen (computer sci-
entist) and I (engineer) had the vision to build machine
learning and natural language processing applications
in industrial and other niche domains. We were hap-
py and truly humbled to win the challenge to get the
chance to negotiate the procurement contract with
Tekes (Business Finland).
The biggest value Industryhack creates for us is
facilitating close dialogue with hosts, that is, potential
client prospects. The close relationship allows an open
attitude for exploring relevant questions and identifying
how machine learning can be best positioned for the
highest impact.
Small or new companies often find sales challenging,
because of the lack of extensive networks with big en-
terprise client prospects. Industryhack makes big com-
panies much easier to reach, enabling small companies
to better co-create with the big companies.
The innovation challenges create profound memories
for us, because of the high-intensity creative process,
outside of the daily work. Building the idea, defining
problems, benefits, and implementing the solution with-
in a very limited time is a great exercise for specialist
technology companies. It is also excellent for building
effective team dynamics and trust, through recognizing
one another’s strengths and weaknesses. Industryhack
open innovation challenges achieve all this superbly!
Photo: VXT Research team at Maritime Hack challenge
Solver Highlight: VXT Research
Machine learning company that
got started from a challenge

37. 76 77
Kwork Innovations is a company that builds AI powered
chatbots. The company was founded on the idea of
stopping boring websites. Still, the vast majority of web-
sites are traditional product catalogs or business card
pages, although consumer behavior and technology
opportunities have changed. They have participated
in several Industryhack challenges and got important
customers.
Heikki Törrönen, Innovation Coach at Kwork
We have taken part to several different hackathons,
but from my personal point of view, you can get a lot
more out of Industryhack’s challenges. This is probably
based on the model Industryhack has, which enables
deeper insights and you get to actually practice and
develop the things that are challenging to yourself, for
example pitching. It will really be coached and you will
get support for it.
Personally it enriches and you will get deep into the
industries. In terms of business development, it is valu-
able when approaching public sector cases, generally
it opens entrance to the system in very concrete level. It
also enables better targeting for products and serving
the customers a little better.
It has been very nice working side by side with the
customers. Usually they have been very professional
and interested in solving the challenge. It can clearly be
seen that they have prepared for the challenge as they
always have something to give and have a personal
interest.
After the challenge, there is a very strong trust that
things will go well. It is great that your professionality
is trusted and you are given the freedom to push the
project forward.
Kwork’s team at the Aalto University’s challenge
Solver Highlight: Kwork
Developing our product side
by side with the customers

38. 78 79
Cybercom is a Nordic IT consulting company that has
over 1300 employees. The company’s teams have
participated in several Industryhack challenges. In
challenges related to preventive maintenance, the
company developed a product called Machine Book
which helps maintenance operators to see anomalies
in production environment and teach the AI to spot
problem situations. One of the company’s frequent
participants, Tarmo Pajunen, has had a big change in
his personal role because of the challenges.
Tarmo Pajunen, Manager at Cybercom
Taking part in Industryhack’s challenges has had many
kinds of impacts on our company. It has opened doors
to many customers and helped us win new cases. We
have had a chance to discuss with the customers in ex-
citing atmosphere rather than pushing sales in meeting
rooms.
Internally these challenges have been a source of mo-
tivation and enthusiasm. We always had champagne
bottles waiting for the winners at the office and cele-
brated the successes together. We formed the teams
with a mix of different expertises, which connected
people in interesting ways.
The biggest impact personally has been my changed
role inside the company. Participating in one of the
challenges resulted in a completely new business for
us which we have taken forward together with my team.
Three years later, we are still on this path. It has kept me
so busy that I have not had the time to participate in
Industryhack challenges anymore.
Cybercom’s team at Fortum’s Hack the Solar challenge
Solver Highlight: Cybercom
“We always have champagne
bottles for winners at the office”

39. 80 81
FlyAR is an augmented reality studio that helps their
customers by building interactive augmented reality
solutions. The company was founded by Frans Tih-
veräinen and Eero Salminen in 2017 after they par-
ticipated in Hack the Pack challenge, in which Stora
Enso wanted to find ways to tell the story of their wood
based packages from the forest to the consumer.
FlyAR developed a concept to tell this story via aug-
mented reality that can be triggered by scanning a tag
in the pack. The solution has been used in Stora Enso’s
packaging materials after this. Winning Stora Enso as
the first reference customer has helped the company
to get a great kickstart.
Frans Tihveräinen, CEO of FlyAR
Our two person company would have no other chance
to go and talk with a large company like Stora Enso.
Participating in a challenge like this is the only way
we could get a chance to spend a lot of time with the
customer, understand their problems and develop solu-
tions for them. This was a one-time opportunity for us,
and we made sure we deliver. In the end, we believe our
project came out as the best AR package in the world.
I think Industryhack has created the right practices of
how open innovation challenges should be organized.
I believe that Industryhack has set the standard for
innovation challenges.
FlyAR’s Frans Tihveröinen presenting their story at Open Innovation Meetup Stockholm
Solver Highlight: FlyAR
Starting a company with
a huge reference case

40. 82 83
Remod is a software agency that works with a wide
range of industries to build tailor-made software and
cloud infrastructure solutions. They have participated
in several Industryhack challenges, and won important
reference cases.
Jon Ekberg, Business Specialist at Remod
Industryhack has made it possible for organisations
that don’t have the internal culture or model to do these
kind of innovation events or projects to see that there
is a working format which can be applied to almost
any organisation’s needs. It is especially great how
this has been received by larger organisations and the
public sector. It has opened doors for both innovators
and problem owners and - through the use of the open
innovation model - made it possible to bring together
interesting problems and amazing solvers.
Open innovation challenges organized by Industryhack
are one of the best ways to get completely out of the
box ideas for your business. It is hard to find other ways
to get 20-30 passionate professionals to work on a
single problem than by organising an open innovation
challenge. In addition to its vast possibilities, it has
more reasonable risks than its alternatives and creates
polished solutions which get evaluated and iterated on
multiple times.
Taking part in the Industryhack open innovation chal-
lenge is an amazing way to push yourself out of your
comfort zone and try new things and new ways of solv-
ing problems. No idea is too crazy to bring up. You get
the opportunity to try something new and learn things
you can apply to your work further along.
The open innovation challenge is a great way to get to
know your peers better in addition to networking and
finding new connections. When you put three people
to work together with a compact, fast and intensive pro-
ject, you quickly get to see how they work under pres-
sure and in a space where you need to rapidly innovate
and iterate on things.
Remod’s: Jon Ekberg at Ponsse’s challenge
Solver Highlight: Remod
“Challenges open doors
quickly to decision makers”

41. 84 85
Steerpath is a company that builds indoor positioning
and navigation technology for mobile applications.
They participated in the Critical App Challenge hosted
by Airbus in Germany in 2018. Joining the challenge
resulted in a partnership with Airbus, developing an
application to their platform for mission critical com-
munications of life-saving professionals.
Tuomas Ilola, CEO of Steerpath
One concrete impact we got from the challenge is the
ongoing cooperation with Airbus. We learned to under-
stand their challenges and how they solve those chal-
lenges with their own solutions. We also learned how
things work internally in large organisations. If you have
worked only in startups, it is surprising how hard certain
things are and you need to understand the operation of
different business units, the sales cycles and so on.
Industryhack’s model is kind of an intensive workshop
with the client and typically you reach people who
you are not able to reach in normal sales or consulta-
tion meeting. You get a variety of people who you can
interview and develop the concept further with before
you pitch it. Although taking part in the challenge takes
time, it is an effective way to iterate on a concept. In a
regular sales meeting you may meet two people only for
an hour and try to figure out what their problem is. Then
you build the solution on your own, which might not
meet the customer’s expectations.
Industryhack has changed the model of hackathons.
Before we thought that hackathons are more PR for
large organisations rather than real problem solving
and direct cooperation after the challenge.
(Photo by Airbus)
Solver Highlight: Steerpath
Helping save lives with indoor
positioning technology

42. 86 87
The solvers work hand in hand with industry experts. Anna Törrönen is learning to drive a crane.

43. 88 89
Jenny Gyllander modifying an Iittala product Jason Brower explains how they are connecting Toikka bird to Twitter

44. 90 91
4. Our impact

45. 92 93
Measuring our impact
For this report, we have studied all our challenges
starting from 2015. We have researched the numbers
through interviews, reports and our previous work on
impact studies. The interviews in this book have been
done so that they would be as representative as pos-
sible about the different impacts and outcomes from
participating in the programs.
We have categorised the impact we have made in five
main themes.
- New business opportunities for SMEs
- Total of 34 new solutions
- Fairer terms and faster collaboration
- Contribution to the renewal of Finnish public sector
- Contribution to the renewal of the Finnish industry
Impact #1: New business opportunities for SMEs
Small and medium-sized companies may often feel like
they don’t have a chance to go to a large organisation’s
doorstep and start negotiating for a partnership / start
a sales negotiation. On the other side, large organisa-
tions may have difficulties finding a suitable partner
from a vast amount of small and medium-sized com-
panies. Often smaller companies don’t have resources
for large sales teams or advertising. Open innovation
challenges provide a good tool for sides to find each
other. Like UPM’s Jukka-Pekka Häkli stated: “The fact
is, we wouldn’t have found this good solution for our
challenge on our own.” We have even seen that some
companies, like Perfektio, have started to use partici-
pation in innovation challenges as their main customer
acquisition channel instead of traditional sales.
So far, we have provided 1141 teams opportunity to
pitch their idea, out of which 464 teams have designed
a concept together with 37 large companies and 10
public organisations. Our customers and solvers have
agreed 79 proof of concept projects worth over 1,5
million euros. After this, projects have been continued
in 39 cases and the worth is estimated to be more than
10 million euros.
When a small company gets the first connection to the
large organisation through the challenge, the atmos-
phere for further negotiations may be completely dif-
ferent. Getting a project together with a big company
from a challenge provides a great reference for a small
company. Landing a proof of concept project or even
further cooperation with a large organisation might be
a huge turning point for a small company. One of the
interviewed startups got access to a huge internation-
al organisation as a customer after getting reference
cases through our innovation challenges.

46. 94 95
We have also seen completely new companies starting
after winning a challenge and project with the cus-
tomer. Frans Tihveröinen and Eero Salminen founded
FlyAR after getting their first customer from the Stora
Enso challenge. Vincent Kuo and Tapio Auvinen were
originally Ph.D. researchers who won the Business Fin-
land challenge and founded VXT Research, which has
then become a growing machine learning company.
Arjun Kamath and Ella Kaila developed a new cus-
tomer service for Veho, and started the Reality Click
company to market the solution globally.
Impact #2: Total of 39 new solutions
The goal for organising an innovation challenge is
always to find solutions to the specified problem or
theme. Industryhack challenges have so far resulted in
39 new solutions for our customers.
To be clear, we consider a solution as a product or
development project that the customer has decided
to continue after a proof of concept or pilot project.
These solutions may be consumer services like L&T’s
Helpponouto waste pickup service or Fortum’s Au-
rinkolaskuri solar power calculator. They also may be
solutions to internal efficiency like VXT Research’s
Business Finland Connection, or three solutions Fin-
grid implemented for better power grid forecasting.
Some of the solutions have become completely new
business-to-business products that the solver com-
pany has started to offer to other customers as well.
For example, Veho’s partnership was the kickstart for
Reality Click, a company behind the mobile customer
experience service carrying the same name. CGI’s Apu-
ri for city maintenance planning got started from Stara
challenge, and Cybercom’s Machinebook for predic-
tive maintenance was developed over Konecranes’
and Fortum’s challenges. Another service started from
Stara’s partnership was Twenty Hexagon’s Callplate
that helps cities and citizens to save money by reduc-
ing the need for towing cars in parking restricted areas.
Impact #3: Fairer terms and faster collaboration
While organising innovation challenges we have be-
come an intermediator whose role is to make sure that
the process is fair for both sides of the table. We facili-
tate collaboration between large companies with own
legal departments and small companies that typically
don’t have any legal expertise. This sets an imbalance
between the actors.
Our efforts from the very beginning to let our cus-
tomers and solvers focus on solving the challenge
together instead of talking about work. We encourage
a culture of experimentation, but it’s difficult to start
collaboration if it’s too slow to agree on terms in the
first place. Based on our study, it took on average 4,5
months to make a contract for a 1-2 month project. We
set to develop standard contracts, making the process
seamless.
We have spent countless days with the lawyers of the
top companies in Finland, talked with lawyers rep-
resenting startups, researched dozens of actualised
contracts, interviewed both parties about the problems
of contracting, and organised workshops to hear issues
and bring all parties to the same table to figure out the
best ways to agree on collaboration so that it is most
convenient, simple and fair.
As a result of this work, we have released our general
terms for open innovation challenges and proof of con-
cept projects for the public to use. We hope these will
transform into industry standard in the future.
Henri Malkki, Perfektio
“Industryhack has driven how open innovation chal-
lenges work between large organisations and small
ones into a healthier direction. There are clearer rules
and small companies can experience the challenge as
a fair game”
Impact #4: Contribution to the renewal of the
Finnish public sector
The Finnish public sector is buying services for 35
billion euros every year. The new government, led by
prime minister Antti Rinne, set a goal to increase the
share of innovative public procurement up to 10 % of
the whole budget, which means 3,5 billion euros would
be spent for innovations. We have seen it very closely,
that this is easier said than done. We have worked with
10 different public organisations so far to build a new
model for innovative procurement, facilitating 25 % of
the example cases enabled by the new procurement
law.
The public sector can work as a testbed for innova-
tions, providing resources, mentoring, product devel-
opment support and public references for new inno-
vative companies starting from Finland. The key is to
define the desired impact and design the procurement
process around finding the best possible solution and
partner to make this into reality. At best this kind of
co-creation with startups and innovative SMEs can
have a dramatic effect on Finnish wellbeing in the fu-
ture. We believe there is a big opportunity here to direct
these investments to make big bets in the Finnish eco-
system. We will continue to work for this goal, and help
public organisations to find and co-create innovative
solutions to make better use of taxpayers’ money, and
also enable new success stories.
Tuomo Suortti, Business Finland
“This was a kickstart for our own and a little more
serious and ambitious digitalisation. We learned how
agile developing tools and culture are applied to an
organisation. These are quite big things for us. From
the challenge, we got a team that we became partners
with and started building a product for internal use. With
normal competition procedure, we wouldn’t have found
the partner for this.”
Impact #5: Contribution to the renewal of the
Finnish industry
When we started, our main objective was to help con-
tribute to the renewal of the Finnish industry. The aim
was to start doing, run experiments and bring top minds
together to solve the big challenges of the industry.
When collecting feedback from our customers, the
most valuable impact they report is a change of the
culture. We repeatedly hear quotes such as “this start-
ed our culture change” or “this helped us to understand
what can be done in just a few days”.
This impact is also the hardest to measure, but we have
something to back up this claim. We have worked with
some of the leading companies in Finland, including
20 of the largest 50 companies in Finland. There have
been 464 concepts that have been developed. A little
more than 1100 individuals have used over 3500
working days to develop solution ideas to the defined
challenges with industry experts. Industryhack has also

47. 96 97
been awarded for contribution to the competitiveness
of Finland by the Technology industries’ Technology
Award 2017, ICT sector’s Blue Arrow Award 2016 and
Finnish Service Alliance’s Service Act of the year 2016
awards.
One of the goals we set for Industryhack in the very
beginning was to make industrial internet sexy and
interesting for the brightest minds, in order to create
success stories from it. So far, we have had applications
from more than 700 different companies, mostly SMEs,
which covers about half of the Finnish companies in
the ICT sector. Not all of them have even considered
industrial internet as a possibility before joining one
of the Industryhack challenges which have provided
a good understanding of various real-world industries
and tempted people from various backgrounds like
games and education technology to get interested
about opportunities in the industrial internet. We be-
lieve this interdisciplinary approach is something that
should be valued also in the future.
We were the first company in Finland that started pro-
moting hackathons as a systematic way to co-create
with external teams and innovative SMEs. This started
a massive effect on the Finnish media and corporate
world. After this, there is probably nobody in Finnish
business that has not heard of hackathons, nor applied
them to their own ways of working.
Juha Pankakoski, CDO of Konecranes
“This is something we don’t do just for fun, but in order
to be competitive in the future as well.”
Tomio Pihkala, CTO of KONE
“Our people have become more open for this kind of
co-operation with the externals. We’ve had a strong
tradition that we want to develop everything internally.
But many of our people got the idea that hey, this could
actually work.”
Päivi Paltola, SVP of Fiskars Living
“I believe that in today’s world, this is how we should
work. We need to pilot, you need to learn, you need to
try things.”
Jussi Herlin, vice chairman of KONE
“This whole experience has been a resounding success.
I hope it has been giving as much to the teams that
participated as it has for KONE.”
KONE’s Tomio Pihkala speaking at the jury session

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Juho Nummela, CEO of Ponsse
“We try to be quite radical in our innovation. Industryhack is a
good platform for making these kinds of disruptive moves.”

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Solvers listening to the briefing at Lassila & Tikanoja’s recycling site.

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Thank yous
Putting together a book like this requires a tremendous
amount of people to make something worth telling. A
huge thank you goes to Janina Rinta-Möykky, who has
worked half a year interviewing our customers, solvers
and going through our databases and documents to
get this story straight. Another big applause goes to
Daniel Taipale, our gifted photograpger (@dansmoe)
who has spent numerous times with us in the field to
create the visual feeling that is tangibly visible in this
book.
Industryhack story would not have begun without the
spark that got started by the people pushing industrial
internet forward in Finland. Thank you Pekka Sivonen,
Pekka Lundmark, Jukka Viitasaari, Kari Penttinen,
among several others. Thank you, Juha Pankakoski
from Konecranes, our very first customer. Without your
decision the whole movement would not have got the
pull it needed from the industry.
We would not have any stories to tell without our
amazing team and people who have worked at Indus-
tryhack from the very beginning. A big thank you goes
out to co-founders Mikael Hautala, Ville Riikkala, and
employees Juho Kokkola, Aino Heiska, Ella Ronkainen,
Pauliina Solanne, Jason Brower, Anna Korpela, Eeva
Siika-aho, Marin Pranjic, Inka Mero, Harry Santamäki,
Emilia Roiha, Olga Balakina, Hannu Latva-Rasku
and Satu Huotari. Also a big hand goes to the several
volunteers, interns and helpers who have worked with
us at our events.
In the beginning, this was a struggling business, and we
were fortunate to have supporters who believed in us
and sponsored the work. Without them, we would not
have been able to jump full-time on this. Huge thank
you to Samsung, IBM, Business Finland and Elisa.
Thank you to all of our dear customers and the people
who have been talking a lot of good about us to wide
audiences, like Juho Nummela, Lasse Eriksson and
Tomas Hedenborg.
And last, probably the most important people in the
equation. Thank you to the solver community. You
are the key people in making the impact happen. We
have only begun learning how to help you solve big
challenges together with the large ones. Let’s keep on
building and learning.
IH:n tiimikuvia tähän

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1st Edition
Published in September, 2019
Research work by Janina Rinta-Möykky
Text by Janina Rinta-Möykky & Petri Vilén
Edited by Petri Vilén
All photos by Daniel Taipale (if not credited)
Layout by Tripleviné