“Behind every new product, there are usually many internationally networked researchers with decades of experience.”
“I think I was seven years old when I announced that this boy was going to buy himself a pocket calculator. In the 1970s, they were rare and expensive. I have always found technology fun, fascinating and easy to adopt. Yet I am perplexed by other people’s skills in drawing or singing.” Regardless, Vasara does not think of himself as a scientist. “I wrote my last scientific paper sometime in the 1990s. I have since been working with business and technology. If I were to make a comparison with information technology, I would say I am less interested in programming and more in what the code can accomplish in the real world.” His current work as the CEO of VTT includes a lot of coordina- tion work in bringing start-ups, research, companies, and public bodies – or funding – to the same table. Vasara says there are many good things about the Finnish product development sector as all the important parties work and interact with each other. “Although we have this good dialogue, we need to improve how science produces results that can be commercialised. It is difficult for companies to work with early-stage research concepts because they need more fully formed and easily commercialised product concepts. On the other hand, universities face the challenge of getting companies to be bolder in joining research projects.” An innovator’s DNA The company that gets its product to the market first has the advantage, whether the product is based on deep tech or other technologies. It sounds obvious, but there is usually a rocky road from the idea to the mass production stage. In today’s world, individual inventors starting revolutions in their garages are a vanishing phenomenon.
“Behind every new product, there are usually many interna- tionally networked researchers with decades of experience. This is a good foundation, but it still needs support from experts in commercialisation, marketing and business. Many pioneering inventions are born in think tanks where the members represent as many different backgrounds and fields of expertise as possible.” Vasara says that internalising this wisdom is not always simple. “My message to companies in the forest sector – and other sectors, too, of course – is that the power of networks cannot be overstated. Where do we get ideas? How do we scale them up? Where can we find the expertise we lack? These matters need to be kept in mind all the time. Finland has a certain Silicon Valley quality to it. Start-ups are quick to assume that bringing a big company into the product development process will ruin everything by making operations slow and inflexible. Of course, that does not need to be the case, but companies still maintain a high threshold for engaging in cooperation.” Risk management capacity is also essentially linked with deep tech. After successful commercialisation, a company’s cash flow and reputation may increase exponentially, but the same goes for the risks. Sometimes, an excellent product idea can fail simply because of timing. “For example, Nokia had a long and comprehensive investment programme for the development of Wi-Fi technology, but even- tually abandoned it. Immediately afterwards, Wi-Fi took off. It was not a lack of expertise, just timing.” The forest sector lives and breathes deep tech Vasara believes that the forest industry and its products will be almost solely based on deep tech in the future. He thinks this
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