Seinäjoki

Starting situation

Seinäjoki is one of the fastest growing cities in Finland. In recent years the structural changes including fusions and other cooperative liaisons in the municipality sector and public services have impacted individual citizens´ role and opportunities to influence in local decision making and service development. Parallel decline of manufacturing industries and construction has forced municipality to develop the industrial policy toward emerging and more innovative fields in service and creative industries. These approaches have created a need for new and creative ways to participation of the product / service end users and open innovation processes combining partners in municipality and service development.

Main challenges

The challenges the city of Seinäjoki is facing are related to managing the growth of the city and the ability to be able to respond to the growing need of public and social services. The city of Seinäjoki  wants to find new solutions to improve the life of the citizens by developing new innovative approaches to public services.  The specific challenge is to promote the co-creation of smart responses to societal challenges in the area of public services provision with high involvement of end users.