New business opportunities with ubiquitous computing: Finnish Ubiquitous Computing Cluster programme

In the face of intensifying global competition, especially from the USA and Japan, but not forgetting the emerging markets or BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India and China (Paliwoda, S. 2006), Finland has recognised the pressing need to advance its competitiveness in a number of key industries. Through the adoption of a sophisticated triple helix-based National Cluster Programme, the conditions have been put in place to facilitate the acceleration of said industries. Indeed, for the ICT sector, the vision of the Ubiquitous Computing Cluster is that by the end of the programme season in 2013, Finland will be the know-how leader in the development, commercialisation and capitalisation of embedded intelligence in human-centred, distributed, mobile and constructed environments.