Regional and innovation policies in Finland - towards convergence and/or mismatch?

This paper studies the evolution of regional and innovation policies in Finland. Traditionally, regional policy in Finland supported populating the whole country providing equal access to welfare regardless location and resources. Policies toward a knowledge-intensive society and a national innovation system started in the early 1990s. These focus on globalisation, competitiveness and high technology. Currently innovation and regional policies are converging making regions more important in innovation matters, as indicates the Centres of Expertise and Regional Centre Development Programmes and the Multipolis project. However, without clear focusing such convergence can lead locally into a mismatch between policy goals and outcomes

Co-creating Knowledge with Robots: System, Synthesis, and Symbiosis

In the contemporary robotizing knowledge economy, robots take increasing responsibility for accomplishing knowledge-related tasks that so far have been in the human domain. This profoundly changes the knowledge-creation processes that are at the core of the knowledge economy. Knowledge creation is an interactive spatial process through which ideas are transformed into new and justified outcomes, such as novel knowledge and innovations. However, knowledge-creation processes have rarely been studied in the context of human–robot co-creation. In this article, we take the perspective of key actors who create the future of robotics, namely, robotics-related students and researchers. Their thoughts and actions construct the knowledge co-creation processes that emerge between humans and robots. We ask whether robots can have and create knowledge, what kind of knowledge, and what kind of spatialities connect to interactive human–robot knowledge-creation processes. The article’s empirical material consists of interviews with 34 robotics-related researchers and students at universities in Finland and Singapore as well as observations of human–robot interactions there. Robots and humans form top-down systems, interactive syntheses, and integrated symbioses in spatial knowledge co-creation processes. Most interviewees considered that robots can have knowledge. Some perceived robots as machines and passive agents with rational knowledge created in hierarchical systems. Others saw robots as active actors and learning co-workers having constructionist knowledge created in syntheses. Symbioses integrated humans and robots and allowed robots and human–robot cyborgs access to embodied knowledge.© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Springer. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Undocumented Migrants and their Everyday Lives

This open access monograph provides an overview of the everyday lives of undocumented migrants, thereby focusing on housing, employment, social networks, healthcare, migration trajectories as well as their use of the internet and social media. Although the book’s empirical focus is Finland, the themes connect the latter to broader geographical scales, reaching from global migration issues to the EU asylum policies, including in the post-2015 situations and during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as from national, political, and societal issues regarding undocumented migrants to the local challenges, opportunities, and practices in municipalities and communities. The book investigates how one becomes an undocumented migrant, sometimes by failing the asylum process. The book also discusses research ethics and provides practical guidelines and reflects on how to conduct quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research about undocumented migrants. Finally, the book addresses emerging research topics regarding undocumented migrants. Written in an accessible and engaging style the book is an interesting read for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners

Vaihtoehtoisia korvausmalleja hammashoidon sairausvakuutusjärjestelmän kehittämiseksi

Tässä tutkimuksessa tavoitteena oli tarjota vaihtoehtoja keskusteluun hammashoidon sairausvakuutuskorvausjärjestelmän uudistamiseksi. Vaihtoehtoisten korvausmallien, porrasmallin ja tilimallin, korvauksia verrattiin vuonna 2009 voimassa olleen taksamallin korvauksiin. Laskelmien avulla arvioitiin, ketkä korvausta saaneet hyötyisivät ja ketkä häviäisivät. Tutkimuksen aineistona oli otos henkilöistä, jotka saivat sairausvakuutuksen sairaanhoitokorvausta yksityisen hammashoidon kustannuksista vuonna 2009. Otoksen koko oli 100 000 henkilöä, joilla oli yhteensä 503 093 toimenpidettä. Aineistossa oli tiedot henkilöille tehdyistä toimenpiteistä, toimenpiteistä maksetuista palkkioista ja saaduista korvauksista. Taustamuuttujia aineistossa olivat sukupuoli, ikä, kotikunta ja valtionveronalaiset vuositulot. Laskelmissa käytettiin kahta vaihtoehtoista korvausmallia: porrasmallia ja tilimallia. Porrasmallissa korvaus nousi, kun asiakkaan kustannukset nousivat. Tilimallissa kaikilla oli käytössään vuosittain samansuuruinen korvaussumma. Tutkimusaineiston todellisille toimenpiteille laskettiin vaihtoehtoisten mallien mukaiset korvaukset. Laskelmissa oletettiin, että henkilöiden toimenpiteet ja toimenpiteiden palkkiot säilyvät ennallaan. Korvausmallit pidettiin kustannusneutraaleina, joten niiden korvaussumma oli korkeintaan vuoden 2009 tasolla. Laskelmat osoittivat, että tilimallista hyötyisi kolme neljästä korvauksen saajasta. Korvausprosentti oli taksamallia korkeampi, kun vuosikustannus eivät ylittäneet 500 euroa. Porrasmallin käyttöönotosta hyötyisi yksi kymmenestä korvauksen saajasta. Korvausprosentti kasvoi, jos vuosikustannus ylitti 800 euroa. Sitä pienemmällä vuosikustannuksella korvausprosentti pieneni taksamalliin verrattuna. Jos sairausvakuutuksen korvausjärjestelmää halutaan uudistaa kustannusneutraalisti ja samalla parantaa edellytyksiä käyttää yksityisiä hammashoitopalveluja, tulisi soveltaa tilimallia porrasmallin asemesta

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Events during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The User Preferences of VirBELA Virtual 3D Platform at the SHIFT Event Organized in Finland

The COVID-19 pandemic brought abrupt changes for international events that promote entrepreneurship and innovation. Usually, such events bring together thousands of participants to provide them with information about ongoing and emerging trends in their fields, to network with old and new colleagues and get ideas that can develop into innovations. In 2020, most such events were cancelled. Few events were organized virtually, that is without participants physically coming together. Compared with physical face-to-face events, virtual events reduce the travel-related emissions and consumption, thereby supporting sustainability. This article studies the SHIFT entrepreneurship and innovation event held virtually in October 2020 and organized in Finland. For this article, the author gathered data about user preferences from surveying participants, speakers, presenters and organizers, almost all of whom were first-time users of VirBELA's 3D virtual platform. Furthermore, participant observation and interviews via avatars were conducted during the event. At the virtual event, 68% of respondents talked with former acquaintances, and 68% also talked with new acquaintances, and 53% opinioned that using the virtual platform can support the emergence of innovations. Virtual entrepreneurship and innovation events have potential to support networking, novel ideas and thus innovations, but issues of trust and confidentiality arose concerns among some participants

Geography and history education in Estonia: processes, policies and practices in an ethnically divided society from the late 1980s to the early 2000s

This article studies processes, policies and practices for geography and history education in Estonia. The analysis covers the societal transformation period in an ethnically divided society from the 1980s to the early 2000s characterized by Estonia’s disintegration from the Soviet Union towards the integration to the European Union and NATO. Geography and history education curricula, textbooks and related policies and practices promoted a particular national time-space by supporting the belongingness of Estonia into Europe, rejecting connections towards Russia and suggesting a division between ethnic Estonians and ethnically non-Estonian residents of Estonia. In geography and history textbooks, the Russian-speaking population, comprising then almost a third of the entire population of Estonia, was divided into non-loyal, semi-loyal and loyal groups of whom only the latter could be integrated in the Estonian time-space. The formal education policies for geography and history supported Estonia’s disintegration from the Soviet past and pawed way to integration to the western political and economic structures. However, challenging market and sensitive cultural contexts created peculiar, alternative and sometimes opposing local practices in geography and history education.</p