Anna Kuukka

Point of View by Vikki Eriksson, Postdoctoral researcher, Aalto Design Factory

Operating in the same market does not always make competitors. Despite the alcoholic beverages industry being heavily restricted by laws and regulations, it is also an industry with a lot of cooperation going on between different players. Especially the field of craft beer has a myriad of informal collaborating amongst small breweries – competitors in

Cabbage farmers with passion to innovate and work with various projects involving farming, nature, bees and handcraft, Sugar Daddies Co. based in Iso-Kyrö is a good case where linked missions influence business actions, strategy and decision making. Conveyed through for example in their company story, establishment of a foundation for saving the bees (Sugar Daddies

Collaboration and co-creation between companies can spark new ideas, products and ways forward. Restaurants and their chefs have been one of the most active development collaborators of packaged food and beverage entrepreneurs, testing products as well as coming up with new ideas. One example of product co-creation in venture-restaurant partnership can be found between Michelin-star

Already familiar with utilizing the expertise of bartenders in their earlier products, Kyrö Distillery Company decided to utilize the expertise of international bartenders in developing their bitters. After choosing seven bartenders as co-developers, the company sent out development kits of herb distillments for them to mix and experiment with. An open-ended development period started where

Within 72 entrepreneur interviews, 37 DesignBites case companies reported 606 interactions with stakeholders outside of their company when describing their development efforts – we’ve analyzed what these reflect on during-crisis collaboration.

CREATIVE RESPONSES OF FINNISH FOOD VENTURES AMIDST THE CRISIS Based on interviews from 24 Finnish food ventures and 844 Covid-19 related Instagram posts in March-May 2020 from 66 Finnish food ventures, we found that many companies were active experimenters right away when the pandemic hit. While the social media posts consisted mostly of communications and

INGREDIENTS OF THE FINNISH FOOD INDUSTRY Interviewing 16 different types of food industry players, including suppliers, investors, cafes, restaurants, and retail chains, draws a picture of an industry with long traditions yet undergoing large transformation resulting from innovations in how we design, produce, choose, deliver and enjoy food. The industry players brought up a large

Within 72 entrepreneur interviews, 37 DesignBites case companies reported 606 interactions with stakeholders outside of their company when describing their development efforts – we’ve analyzed what these reflect on during-crisis collaboration.

In this episode our DesignBites researcher Erika Perttunen discusses with Milla Westerling from Green Planet Astronauts and Sofia Laurell from Tiny Organics about developing healthy and plant-based children’s foods. How to develop and market them ethically? What experimentations and collaboration have they done and why are they motivated to change the world through children’s foods?