Finland Times

 

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The third Midnight Pitch Festival ended on Friday in Oulu with a PrintoCent InnoFest idea contest.

 

The theme of the event was printed intelligence that manifested in the form of daily life solutions and applications in various fields, such as in medicine, construction and all kinds of consumer gadgets and toys. 

 

The event gathered over 150 participants including guests, jury, experts and the teams who could witness other teams working on their ideas, keynotes, speeches from experts and the featured demo stands from FlexBright, GCE, the Oulu University of Applied Sciences and so on.

 

The teams worked on their ideas during the two days of the festival with support from experts and the ideas were evaluated and given constructive feedback by a jury. 

 

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According to Mansoor Siddiqi of Liquefy Innovations, a jury member and a guest speaker at the event, printed electronics not only have countless opportunities for daily life applications but also provide environmentally less taxing solutions and cheaper manufacturing cost than traditional hardware.

 

On Friday afternoon the winning team AA+ was announced. AA+ consisted of three different businesses. The winning team AA+ got a 1,111 euro cash prize along with a manufacturing deal, technical support, business development and marketing support. 

 

Team AA+ invented a concept for smart bandages that would absorb medicine into body and thus potentially replace traditional vaccinations and injections.

 

“This year the jury had no easy task determining the winner. At the end, clear concept of a product combined with international potential and scalability pinpointed the winner,” said one of the organisers, Sari Päivärinta of SPP Concern Ltd.

 

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Also focusing on printed intelligence, Hilla (High-tech ICT Leverage from Long-term Association), a Tekes-funded research project, held a growth mill session on Friday on the Vinttikamari stage of Oulu City Theatre bringing together both researchers and new and established companies for business collaboration. 

 

The event was organised in collaboration with Oulu University, the Oulu University of Applied Sciences, BusinessOulu and the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT). 

 

The opening speech was delivered by Jani-Mikael Kuusisto of VTT.

 

“The point of today’s growth mill is to help businesses to get into the Hilla project and to find each other,” said Kuusisto.

 

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Hilla growth mill then featured four speeches from representatives of four growing businesses changing their industries with printed intelligence solutions – Ginolis, Nanocomp, Tactotekand and Flexbright. According to Matti Koivu of Ginolis, one of the goals is to establish “dynamic business actions between research and business communities.” 

 

After the speeches, the session progressed into networking to initiate new joint developments between companies.