Understand forests with data – and don't forget business
What happens when you squeeze all sorts of data, the most innovative doers, clever AI, and sufficient supply of soft drinks into same space, shake a bit, and let the magic happen for 48 hours?
This is what we are about to find out. At Business Finland we are joining forces with Location Innovation Hub to organize a hackathon to look into what data and AI can tell us about the biodiversity of forests.
Data opens new insights into our surroundings.
Particularly interesting and potentially most valuable insights can be revealed when we bring data from different sources together and maybe dig into the data with some AI tools. This is what we plan to do in the Beyond Dead Wood Hackathon on March 7-9 where we hope to gain new insights into forests and biodiversity.
At Business Finland we are running the Data Economy program with the grand goal of making a wake-up call to Finnish companies to help them to see the light regarding sharing data and using external data to create new value.
Shared fun is twice the fun – as is stated by an old Finnish proverb.
This applies also to the use and sharing of data. Although, with data the fun is not doubled but tripled. At least if you believe Gartner’s analysis that companies who share data externally generate three times more measurable economic benefit than those who do not’. But remember, sharing data does not always mean one should give it away for free.
Hackathons are not just a fun way to spend a couple of days with likeminded people. As an innovation tool, well managed hackathons have proven to be fruitful tools to ignite new thinking, inspire ideas, and demonstrate opportunities. But the goal of any hackathon is not just to get ideas, have fun and to give a great pitch to win a prize. Rather the target is to kick-start ideas into actual development paths that lead to real solutions, products, and services, maybe with the help of Business Finland's RDI funding. Hopefully, with the Beyond Dead Wood Hackathon we see the birth of future solutions to understand and detect biodiversity to help us make better use of the forests in a sustainable manner.
For the Data Economy program the Beyond Dead Wood Hackathon has two objectives. First, we want to see the birth of great ideas and solutions with possible development paths well beyond the hackathon. We hope to see such new data-based business models and ideas be developed which have the potential to be funded by Business Finland later on down the road.
Secondly, we want to see the hackathon participants to show us all an example – an example of the opportunities shared use of data offers. We want to see examples of how one plus one is more than two, when data is concerned. We hope to see the hackathon participants show us an example in grabbing the opportunities data and sharing of data opens for companies of all sizes and sorts.
Check out more details of the Beyond Dead Wood Data Challenge and enroll your team by February 26th 2024! We are happy to see registrations of ready-formed teams as well as individuals looking for a team to join.