Welcome to Oulu!

Oulu is, and will always remain, a city of technology with thriving innovation ecosystems.

With added value from digitalisation, Oulu solves social, ecological, and economic sustainability challenges through northern innovations: digitalisation in the changing urban environment, digital solutions for health and well-being, and sustainable circular economy and cleantech solutions. Oulu is also evolving into a human‑centred smart city, placing quality of life at the heart of urban development within a resilient knowledge society.

Oulu and UNIC's Centre for City Futures

Our Oulu team leverages the power of collaboration locally and across the alliance network for best impact in our City. We welcome new city and research collaborations and invite you to connect with us to explore possibilities for developing partnership initiatives.

The City-Led Challenge that is currently in focus in Oulu is: Adoption of customer experience-led service design with a digital-first approach.

Customer experience knowledge management in the public sector

Government innovation: ecosystemic operational models

Customer experience designership and leadership

Case: International students seeking to integrate into the labour market

CityLabs - Connect and Co-Create

Our CityLabs activities provide opportunities for stakeholders to come together to aspiringly explore, co-create, co-design, and co-develop solutions in response to complex real-world challenges. Some of the things we have worked on include:

EU Preparatory Action 'Innovation for place-based transformation' (2024-2026), Experimentation Journey Digital Services

Oulu Innovation Challenge and CityLabs workshops resulting an integrated view on the international students’ service experience in Oulu

We are specifically looking for collaborations on citizen and company experience knowledge management in the public sector, and on the experiences of the international students seeking to integrate into the labour market.