City of Oulu as an innovative service platform

There is a need for new and innovative ways to produce and deliver user-centric services for the benefit of citizens and customers. Simultaneously, rapid development of technology brings new opportunities to produce services more and more cost-efficiently and quickly to end-users. From the viewpoint of a company new services and products must be launched to market through a quick innovation process before competitors. Facing these trends the City of Oulu has been systematically developed to a service platform characterized by very close cooperation between parties of different vertical value chains. Instead of Living Labs concept we need more pragmatic approach which combines real field trials and pilots with feedback process, proper technology platforms and infrastructure, test-user communities, real-life service processes, data collection and research services, and reliable local and global network including companies, VCs research groups and governmental parties. European SmartTouch project has been identifying the necessary elements mentioned above if regions and cities aim at introducing advanced public and commercial services, and creating such a service platform that offers relative, `unfair' benefits for new ventures of business.