Basic policy

The aim of internationalisation is to sustain Finland's own growth and development, consolidate international cooperation with our foremost partner countries, enhance our influence as a member of larger communities and improve our capacity for shouldering responsibility for common cross-border problems. Major challenges demanding multilateral cooperation include climate change, energy issues and governance of the social and economic impacts arising from globalisation.

With a view to more effective cooperation, Finland must prioritise the research areas and geographical regions which have the greatest relevance to us and in which our country has world-class expertise and potential for development. Closer interaction, especially with leading global partners, entails that we have world-class expertise of our own. In international collaboration we must be able to exert more influence regarding both the content and targets of cooperation.

The university reform and the structural development of higher education will improve the prerequisites for achieving the goals of internationalisation. the division of work between the universities and the polytechnics must be further clarified and step up their educational and research cooperation in order to, for instance, promote entrepreneurship and regionally based international interaction.

One special challenge for Finland is to further enhance our solid knowledge base, maintain internationally competitive clusters of top quality and strong relevance and to set up selected, high-standard innovation environments in the regions. This requires close interaction among the central administrative sectors and large urban areas (incl. municipalities, regional development companies, technology centres and science parks), the pooling of resources and joint development action. A stronger systemic approach is needed in policy action relating to internationalisation and involving several responsible authorities.

Strategic development

Success in international cooperation and competition calls for both specialisation and reallocation of resources and actions. The choices must fall on areas already prioritised. These are the fields of the strategic centres of excellence, the bio and nano fields to the extent Finnish knowledge is of world-class standard, and software expertise. Secondly, Finland must concentrate on fields in which Finnish research exceeds the critical mass and is internationally known. Thirdly, it is necessary to focus on new openings, such as sustainable, energy conserving and environmentally friendly solutions and clean technologies. Similarly the need for knowledge, new procedures and innovations in the health and well-being sector is growing at a rapid pace, which calls for significant intensification of international collaboration in this sector.

With a view to enhancing human capital and responding to educational needs, Finland must enlarge the recruitment base and activities, internationalise education and training and enhance the quality of education. In development, attention needs to be focused on improving the attractiveness of the researcher career and increasing mobility. Better quantification and (re)direction of education and knowledge are of the essence. Similarly, more vigorous efforts must be made to promote the integration of migrants and the utilisation of their knowledge in society. Finland must adopt a proactive employment- and competence-based immigration policy and legislation in support of it.

The aim in development is a genuinely international higher education and research community. This entails renewing operational principles and procedures in universities, R&D institutes and polytechnics and those of the financing organisations. Measures need to be taken to enhance the quality and attractiveness of higher education institutions by the universities and polytechnics themselves and in cooperation between the administrative sectors and industry and commerce. The aim must be to identify promising researchers and keep them in Finland, to internationalise graduate schools and the researcher career system, and to promote the exportation of education and expertise.

The internationalisation and other services provided for business enterprises must be developed comprehensively in cooperation between public and private partners, with the aim of creating compact and accessible service entities. It is vital to improve the impact of subsidies and to ensure that needs are met. In development, particular attention must be accorded to growth enterprises.

The national intermediaries (i.a. Finpro, Invest in Finland, Tekes, the Academy of Finland, Sitra, the network of Finland’s foreign missions) must jointly invest in coordinated bidirectional promotion of international interaction. The strategy document addresses the development of interaction at the global level, in Europe and in areas adjacent to Finland. The areas to be prioritised in science, research and innovation policy action alongside the leading EU countries are so-called FinNode countries (the US, China, Japan, Russia), the most relevant bilateral partner countries (i.a. South Korea), and the emerging economies in Asia, the Americas and Africa.

Implementation and follow-up

Large-scale internationalisation requires further resources; both public and private investments need to be increased. New joint financing measures and resources involving several partners are highly needed. Through consolidation, development must aim at ensuring sufficient human resources of the highest quality, creating and maintaining infrastructures and speeding up the internationalisation of (growth) enterprises. Improving competitiveness and capacity for cooperation entails incentives and steering that efficiently promote networking and risk-taking on the part of the operators in Finland and internationally. The Research and Innovation Council will assess internationalisation in its next ERI policy review by the end of 2010.

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