Finding exponential growth from Finnish deep technology startups
Businesses and society are faced with technological transformation. This time it will change our economy and our lives in an even more profound way than digitalisation did over the last few decades.
I call this next wave of transition a deep tech transformation.
Antti Vasara
President & CEO, VTT
This transformation is based on scientific breakthroughs, and it is powered by companies making use of them.
The transformation is driven by accelerating global challenges:
The need to tackle climate change, safeguard resources and maintain people’s health create a huge demand for new, world-changing solutions.
Deep tech growth companies thus produce not only bits, but both bits and atoms. Deep tech solutions include such innovations as creating totally new materials – all the way from the atomic level – or guiding personal health through genetic technologies and data.
Having such innovations commercialised will bring forth an entirely new group of companies leading the economy, some being the developers of such innovations and others their early adapters. However, the transformation offers new opportunities in almost every sector from food production to the construction industry and from healthcare to the processing industry.
In this publication, I will continue to map out the same path of exponential hope. However, my focus will now be on the rapidly emerging form of business that I believe to be at the heart of the radical innovation and renewal that companies currently need: deep tech, or deep technology startups.
The definition of the term deep tech, or deep technology, varies in international discussion. In this text, it refers to growth companies whose business is based on recent breakthroughs in science and technology, and which offer unique and disruptive solutions to global problems. They not only improve the existing solutions but create completely new, revolutionary ones. Unlike digital startups, deep technology usually involves concrete physical technologies or products.
My message to companies is this: seize the opportunities of deep tech – right now. The early adapters of new technologies and innovations will win the competition and may find a path to rapid, sustainable growth. Thanks to deep technology, existing products or processes can be made exponentially faster and smarter – and, above all, sustainably.
Panel discussion in Finnish: Syväteknologiasta menestysteollisuutta Suomeen
How is your Finnish? Whether you are a native speaker or practicing your vocabulary, we suggest you tune in to our panel discussion on February 17, 2022, at 9-10.
Discovering exponential hope
In the 2020 VTT vision paper titled Discovering exponential hope, I proposed that Finland invests in new, revolutionary areas of technology that can solve global challenges and generate radical leaps in productivity and sustainability.
