With staff constantly travelling, Nordregio has a broad network, both in the Nordic countries and in Europe. Regional development is a field we share with many different actors and we strive to continuously learn from our stakeholders and feed knew perspectives into our research.
In May 2012 we travelled to Helsinki for an interactive seminar with core representatives from Finnish ministries and regions. The seminar was arranged in cooperation with the Ministry of Employment and the Economy and was held in connection with Nordregio's board meeting in Helsinki.
We very much appreciate interactive seminars. We regard them as opportunities to create shared value with the stakeholders we meet. The seminar in Helsinki will help us to focus our upcoming research on the real needs and challenges that the Finnish regions and ministries are facing.
As a point of departure for the discussions, Nordregio presented new research findings within the fields of:
- Potentiating green growth in Nordic regions: opportunities, challenges and expectations from research
- Spatial planning and regional development
- Nordic capital regions in global networks
As the discussions started to flow, we got into topics around the most important issues influencing these fields in Finland, including local and regional best practices and areas for Nordic cooperation.
The engagement and knowledge the participants from the Finnish regions and ministries shared with us on green growth were impressive, and the discussions could have continued forever. However, another discussion that Nordregio tried to start on how local and regional plans better can be harmonized and coordinated, was ended quickly in a pragmatic way; one after another the Finnish participants told us that 'multilevel cooperation works quite well'. This led us to the last theme of the meeting; on what impact the global network economy has on Helsinki.
Nordregio's new research results on 'Nordic capital regions in global networks' aroused a great deal of interest from the Finnish participants. 'The most eye opening research in a long time' was one out of many comments. After the meeting one of the enthusiastic representative from a Finnish region, literally grabbed the new working paper out of Lukas Smas' (senior researcher at Nordregio) hands with the words 'I will take this home to study more'.
Feel free to download this working paper you too; free of charge from our web site.
Nordregio Working Paper 2012:7 - Nordic 'intercity connectivities' in a multi-scalar perspective
Nordregio Policy Brief - Nordic capital regions in the global network economy