Finnish Startup Community calls for increased R&D investments

The goal is worthwhile, but not enough, according to the Finnish Startup Community. Increasing R&D spending is easier to achieve by enabling and promoting the activities of the companies involved. New jobs are created in new growth-oriented companies.

There are work based immigration, education investments and supporting companies' R&D investments that are the best ways to long term economic growth. Youssef Zad, economist of the Finnish Startup Community, said Finland competes for international R&D investments, especially with Sweden, the Baltics and Germany. The availability of skilled personnel, the proximity of other units and customers of a company, and the level of public R&D subsidies affect which country companies focus their research and development on, said Zad.

The availability of R&D personnel in Finland can be influenced by increasing education places and getting international students to stay and find employment in the country. On the other hand, the proximity of the company's other units can be influenced by attracting companies to locate in Finland in general.

If we manage to create more attractive business clusters in Finland, it is likely that significant R&D investments will be built around them, said Riikka Pakarinen, CEO of the Finnish Startup Community. Parinen reminded that the gaming industry is a good example of this.

R&D investments have a positive impact on the entire national economy. The best amount of R&D expenditures can only be achieved with the help of state funding, according to economist Zad. Research literature shows that innovation activities have a positive impact on economic growth in the long term. Research literature has found that public R&D funding and additional tax deductions have been able to increase R&D activities.

The business support policy of the coming decade needs to be examined critically to make sure our scarce resources are used most efficiently. The government's budget allocations for 2022 will increase by 272 million compared to 2021, as there are positive developments in the public sector's R&D funding policy. The state's R&D funding will increase to almost 2.5 billion euro in total. The direction of R&D support policy was weak in the 2010 s but the current government has been able to make decisions in the early 2020s in the right direction. The direction is very positive at the moment.

The members of the Finnish startup community invest significant sums in research and development expenses and aim for significant growth by the year 2030. If the growth targets are realized and the ratio of R&D expenditure to turnover can be kept at the same level as compared to the current level, this would bring Finland no less than 391 million euros in additional R&D investments. According to CEO Pakarinen, this would be up to 10 percent of Finland's R&D spending growth target.