Digital Platforms for Smart Cities | Summer School

Platforms are dominating and impacting businesses and societies alike. Besides their traditional responsibility, cities are increasingly organizing and exposing data. City-data along with analytics and machine learning improves engagement and inclusiveness of its citizens and visitors. Augmented and virtual reality of the city is another facet of exposing or simulating city data from the past, present or future.

Smart cities are in the quest to meet the challenges of developing and maintaining attractive, inclusive and safe urban environments. Mobility as a service integrates public, private, peer-to-peer, conventional, clean, or autonomous transportation means is just a small example of platform data used smartly. Stakeholders such as local governments, city service providers, industry, and the citizens will benefit from the development of smart and well-connected city digital platforms.

The Helsinki summer school aims to create a better understanding of why platforms are key in shaping economies and societies? How do platforms create such societal and business impact?

Participants in the Helsinki summer school will master the ability to differentiate between traditional businesses and platforms. Participants will acquire knowledge about key success factors and building blocks of multi-sided platforms that create networked markets, and why such platform business models have been so competitive in tech and non-tech industries alike? Moreover, participants will utilize concepts and models to create and assess platform business model entrants in cases provided by cities. Using this knowledge and applying various innovation and entrepreneurship tools provided during the Helsinki summer school, our participants will be well equipped to support Europe's digital cities platform quest.

Even online, at the Helsinki summer school, we rely on the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem at Aalto University and Finland to further expand the insightful and joyful experiences of our summer school participants. Furthermore, participants will appreciate various virtually implemented social  activities that enhance the networking potentials amongst our participants.

After successful completion of the Helsinki summer school, participants will be better equipped to become the digital changemakers that will shape both the firms they create or work during their careers. We look forward to greeting and having an engaging and insightful experience for our Helsinki summer school participants.

Each programme has a focus on business innovation and entrepreneurship, there is no need to have specific technical backgrounds or any coding knowledge to join our Summer School.