Arctic Development Environments Cluster

The Arctic Development Environments cluster provides businesses in Finnish Lapland a one-stop-shop access point to the digital technology expertise and services of its member organisations: universities and research organisations in the region. The cluster supports businesses by helping to improve their processes, products and services by means of digitalisation. The cluster is coordinated by the Lapland University of Applied Sciences, based in Kemi-Tornio and Rovaniemi, and its operations are not-for-profit, with a pricing model based on actual costs. Most of the cluster partner organisations are publicly funded and the revenue is allocated back to the units that have operational costs from providing the service. In addition, the cluster offers businesses services related to R&D funding (access to finance).

The cluster offers companies support at different stages of the product development cycle. The cluster's services include: contract research; test-before-invest; product development; prototyping; business development; access to technological platforms and innovation spaces; funding mapping and matching; and training.

The cluster includes 50 modern infra, environments and laboratories (TEFs) and more than 750 experts and specialists, spanning almost the whole of Lapland. The cluster is also in the process of developing inter-regional collaboration to widen the spectrum of digitalisation services available through the cluster.

The digitalisation services of the cluster can be accessed on the Ardico.fi service portal. The service themes are listed at https://ardico.fi/portal#/themes. These themes include e.g. product testing and analysis, IoT, VR/AR, Cloud services and Big data. The services span the whole TRL scale, with a novel test-before-invest service portfolio.

The portal also provides businesses with tools to e.g. evaluate their level of enterprise digitalisation: https://ardico.fi/portal#/tools

The cluster's service model:

1. The company contacts the cluster.
2. The cluster produces a requirement specification based on the company's need.
3. The business receives a tender specifying the pricing and schedule of the service.
4. If the tender is accepted, a service contract is drawn between the company and the cluster. The pricing is based on the actual costs of the service.
5. A group of experts is selected and their work is coordinated by the cluster.
6. The cluster assists the company with identifying and applying for suitable R&D funding.
7. The cluster submits the results to the company.

The service model has been developed through piloting with SMEs. The cluster’s services are further being developed according to customer needs and feedback. The ultimate goal is to support businesses in developing new products and business models and to launch them with the help of high-quality research.

Further resources for the region’s development will be acquired through international cooperation. Networking with other Digital Innovation Hubs enables cooperation and planning of new project initiatives and consortia.