Nokia's Mothballed Projects to Get Dusted Off and Reused

Unused ideas that Nokia has decided not to develop are to be farmed out to Finnish ICT companies, under a deal announced between the firm and Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. Science park operator, Technopolis is also involved in the partnership.

Nokia's research and development efforts produce massive amounts of new mobile innovations. Only a fraction of the ideas and concepts finally make it in the market as part of Nokia's offering. Consequently, over the years, thousands of potentially successful innovations have been shelved.

This initiative to recycle innovations, to be launched as part of the Nokia Technopolis Innovation Mill, are expected to total up to EUR8 million, including EUR 4.5 million of public funding.

The three-year initiative is a joint effort by Nokia, Technopolis, Tekes and several Finnish cities. Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, has granted a significant amount of the public funding. Technopolis, one of Europe's largest science and technology park chains, will coordinate the initiative and provide business development services to support and enhance the funding effort. The participating cities add to the funding with the aim of boosting the ICT sector in their regions.

The innovations released by Nokia are in areas such as environmental and energy-related solutions, location based services and advertising, near field communication, mobile security, health care applications and future internet services, among others. The objective is to evaluate the thousands of available innovations and select around one hundred to be matched with a company which demonstrates the best ability to exploit them, and which is then granted funding for further development and commercialization.

"More efficient utilization of existing innovations is a novel and interesting perspective in boosting R&D and innovation," said Mr. Martti af Heurlin, Deputy Director General of Tekes. "The Nokia Technopolis Innovation Mill is fully aligned with the Finnish national strategic intent to develop new knowledge intensive ventures. Ideally, the initiative will create significant volumes of new international business."

A selection committee formed by Nokia, Technopolis and Tekes representatives has already started screening and evaluating the available innovations and candidate companies interested in one or more of the ideas. Potential companies are being screened primarily from the databases of Technopolis, Tekes and the participating cities.

Posted to the site on 10th May 2009