Demos Helsinki began in what was not there. For 20 years, this lack has kept us restless, regenerative and unfinished — constantly spotting what new accountability we can carry to ensure the next era is fair, sustainable, and joyful. Yet, stepping into a role of leading societal transformations has not been straightforward; it has not been pre-agreed. Instead, it has become an outcome of our honest motivations and possibilities.
Leading societal transformations calls for the courage to experiment with new ways of being and interacting with each other. It calls for humility to accept that we do not know everything and that we might fail. It calls for honesty to continuously examine our values, our mission and our current form against the ambition we set for ourselves. Above all, it calls for an intellectual curiosity that raises questions, forms hypotheses, tests assumptions and finds joy in both failures and successes.
Demos Helsinki also began in what was there: that needed courage, humility, honesty and curiosity, imperfect but nurtured. They shaped our earliest steps as we leapt into becoming. As we celebrate 20 years of fighting for a sustainable, fair and joyful next era, we want to highlight a few key interventions and collaborations that have been essential in charting the route we now walk together.
Each theme will be introduced with some key questions, as for us, societal change is not about “if” — but about “how”.
Peloton (ca. 2008)
How can societal emissions be reduced effectively by moving beyond awareness campaigns? Can a systemic behavioural change model be focused on major lifestyle choices? Can we naturally lead people towards low-carbon options in housing, mobility, and diet?
It would be hard to talk about the legacy of Demos Helsinki without talking about Peloton. Funded originally by Sitra’s energy programme in 2008–2012, the first phase of Peloton focused on the “Gatekeeper model” that began with one specific intervention: guide people towards the most climate-friendly options at the moment when they make major life decisions in housing, mobility and diet. The approach focused on three steps: concentrating on major lifestyle choices, identifying the professionals who influence them, and helping those professionals design services that naturally lead people towards low-carbon options. Through large co-design workshops with a wide range of professionals, the concept moved quickly into practice and generated ideas that later appeared in companies, public services and new startups.
The outcomes were visible across sectors. A major hardware store chain created a new service model for energy-efficient renovations. The largest workplace cafeteria operator redesigned menus to reduce emissions. A municipal catering company linked its kitchens to the city’s climate goals, and a lifestyle magazine adopted a new editorial policy centred on low-carbon living.
From 2012 to 2019, this effort expanded into the multi-year Peloton program. Peloton was dedicated to supporting startups and ecosystems that enabled low-carbon lifestyles, evolving into a pre-incubator and club that shaped the field of consumer cleantech. The program connected dozens of early-stage startups with cities, public organisations, and major companies, providing crucial testbeds and partnership opportunities. Acting as a catalyst through research and events, Peloton produced ten publications, significantly boosting the credibility and visibility of consumer-focused climate business.
Smart Retro project (2014–2015) was a joint effort by Demos Helsinki, the Centre for Sustainable Communications, and 12 other Nordic cities, companies and universities, exploring how actors of the built environment can push our cities onto a new path of success. This was done by improving the experience of inhabitants through incorporating a new wave of smart urban services to existing urban environments.
During the project, the Peloton Smart Retro Accelerator Program brought together startups, cities and corporations to develop new innovations and business models. The program used rapid experimentation to put ideas into contact with real users in real urban testbeds. The findings of Smart Retro were put together in a final report, Nordic Cities Beyond Digital Disruption. The report outlines the current state and challenges of Nordic cities, introduces three backcasting scenarios for the future of cities and draws together lessons learned from the accelerator program.
Funded by the Interreg Baltic Sea Region as part of the European Regional Development Fund, and led by Innovatum AB and Demos Helsinki, the SmartUp Accelerator (2017–2020) was a collaborative project focused on building consumer cleantech ecosystems around the Baltic Sea. The goal was to activate innovation actors and improve their skills to foster new businesses that reduce the environmental burden of consumption.
The project addressed the growing interest in consumer cleantech, which was driven by factors such as resource scarcity, rising energy and fuel costs, digitalisation, and automation. The Accelerator involved ten organisations from seven countries around the Baltic Sea.
The project facilitated its goal through various activities, including national and international events, trainings, competitions, bootcamps, and the provision of testbeds related to consumer cleantech and smart innovations.
Originating from a 2009 Peloton project and established in 2012, Peloton Club functioned as an accelerator and ecosystem dedicated to capitalising on the business opportunities arising from the existential challenges of climate change and resource depletion. It supported ambitious startup teams by providing the tools, networks, and acceleration programs (e.g. Bees and Trees, TryOut!) necessary to build, test, and scale innovative ideas.
Peloton Club concentrated on developing “smart solutions” primarily within three key areas of lifestyle emissions: food, housing, and mobility. It emphasised startups, entrepreneurship, and community, fostering innovators through workshops, camps, and community gatherings such as legendary Peloton Club Nights.
Sustainable lifestyles (ca. 2011)
What are the most important drivers of change in Europe that will determine the diversity and evolution of sustainable lifestyles? How can sustainable lifestyles evolve from promising local experiments into widespread motors of societal change? What scenarios illustrate the different pathways societies might take to support these new ways of living?
SPREAD was a European Commission -funded project (2011–2012) that brought together stakeholders from business, research, policy, and civil society to co-create a vision for sustainable lifestyles in 2050.
The project aimed to develop a strategic action roadmap for policymakers and generate innovative ideas that help enable sustainable living across Europe. It tackled the dual challenge of maintaining quality of life in an ageing society while reducing energy, transport, and resource use.
SPREAD sought to consolidate fragmented knowledge on sustainable lifestyles and unite diverse initiatives and actors in a structured dialogue. A key focus was identifying the drivers of unsustainable consumption and strategising how to counter them to support a transition toward more sustainable lifestyles.
Wellbeing as a functional necessity (ca. 2016)
How can we unpair wellbeing and societal progress from traditional measures like economic growth and material consumption? How could we reform public policy and existing societal structures to guarantee happiness and wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries?
Conducted in strategic collaboration with Sitra, The Next Era project (2016–2018) explored the future of the Nordic welfare-and-wellbeing model in a time of deep societal transformation — questioning how to guarantee wellbeing for all when fundamental structures such as work, politics, growth and resource limits are shifting.
It emphasised core Nordic values of wide participation, high trust, and fairness, but argued that these need to be reframed for a world where growth might slow, work change rapidly, and ecological limits bite. The project was structured around several thematic axes, including work & income, democracy & participation, growth & progress, and planetary boundaries — each analysed to understand how the Nordic model must evolve.
A major approach of The Next Era was dialogue and co-creation: through publications, workshops (international and domestic), public debates, to build a shared vision for reforming the model rather than simply defending existing structures.
In 2010, we published a Politics of Happiness manifesto in collaboration with WWF. The manifesto argues that in wealthy modern societies, increasing material wealth no longer reliably increases happiness, and that continuing consumption-driven growth is unsustainable, both socially and ecologically.
The manifesto proposes a shift in politics: instead of focusing on income and consumption, policy should foster sustainable wellbeing, emphasising free time, meaningful shared activities, community, and deeper human relationships. Wellbeing is defined broadly: fulfilling basic needs, having freedom to choose meaningful activity, good health, social relationships, safety — and living within the planet’s ecological limits so that human wellbeing and environmental health remain interdependent.
The manifesto calls for public policy that supports these aims: for example, through taxation and social policy that privilege time, community, and sustainability over perpetual consumption and growth. In essence, it promotes a new political paradigm: sustainable happiness based on ecology, social cohesion and meaningful living, not on wealth accumulation or material consumption.
Funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, VALVA (2014–2015) explored the future of health and wellbeing, asking who healthcare services will be produced for, how individual functional capacity can be supported, and how megatrends will shape available health resources.
The project emphasised freedom of choice (valinnanvapaus) in health services: it analysed how legislation, market dynamics, and municipal capacity could enable people to choose and influence the services they receive. It adopted a broad view of health: seeing health not only as medical care, but as shaped by lifestyle, living conditions, infrastructure, capabilities, environment and other non-medical factors.
The project used scenario work to map different possible futures of health: how changes in society, environment, technology and policy might influence health outcomes and equity. Through its work, VALVA aimed to identify new and previously unrecognised resources and opportunities for promoting health and wellbeing beyond traditional health-care systems.
Transforming the public sector (ca. 2014)
How can governmental policymaking be reformed to be more human-centered, evidence-based, and effective by systematically integrating behavioural science insights and a culture of rapid experimentation? What new mechanisms and platforms are needed to efficiently fund, support, and scale citizen-based, grassroots experiments and innovations to drive broader societal reform and ensure policy is aligned with real-world behaviour and needs?
Design for Government (2014–2015) was a project commissioned by the Prime Minister’s Office of Finland and carried out by Demos Helsinki together with Avanto Helsinki and Aalto University. Its objective was to propose a new, fast-to-implement operating model for integrating behavioural-science insights and experimentation culture into the Finnish government’s policy-making and steering mechanisms.
A major element was benchmarking best-practices globally in government experimentation and behavioural policy design; then, as part of the project, students in the course worked hands-on with real governmental challenges.
The desired outcome: more human-centred, evidence- and behaviour-based governance, making policies more targeted, efficient and aligned with how people actually behave (rather than assuming pure rational actor models).
KORVA (Forms of Organising Funding for Experiments) project (2015–2016), led by Demos Helsinki with its partner Finnish Environment Institute, was a part of Finland’s government programme emphasising experiments as tools for societal reform. Its goal was to propose an improved mechanism for funding experiments, especially citizen-based ones, by drafting a proposal for a digital platform to help implement, fund and review experiments.
The platform’s functions would include supporting experimenters with methodology, funding acquisition and evaluation, and bringing grassroots initiatives together with funding and support systems. As a result of the project’s proposal, the Finnish government established a state-owned enterprise and conceptualised a digital platform for citizen-based experiments.
Technology in society (ca. 2015)
In a hyperconnected society where physical and digital realities merge, how can new, human-driven design and business models be developed on trust and equality, to maximise human capability and wellbeing? What are the critical requirements for building a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem that enables companies to compete globally and scale resource-smart prosperity while strictly adhering to planetary ecological limits?
Funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, The Naked Approach (2015–2018) was a strategic research project that explored how to create an alternative, human-driven way of operating in a digitalised society.
The project targeted a hyperconnected society where technology, especially sensor networks and Internet of Things, connects people and things — enabling new ways for participation, capability and wellbeing, within planetary limits. It emphasised Nordic values such as trust, equality, resource-wisdom, and a “gadget-free” environment (i.e. less dependence on devices). The research involved designing new products, services and business models (with companies) to support that vision.
The urbanisation of societies (ca. 2016)
How can the complex phenomenon of urbanisation and the interaction between cities and regions be actively governed, rather than passively accepted, to ensure Finland’s future vitality and sustainable development? What are the key drivers (such as mobility and immigration) and governance structures necessary to plan for and achieve wise, equitable, and sustainable growth within urban regions?
URMI and BEMINE projects (2016–2019), funded by the Academy of Finland (STN), studied how urbanisation is not simply a natural inevitability, but a complex phenomenon that affects the interaction between cities and regions, and the vitality of areas. They emphasised that many major sustainable development challenges are to be resolved in urban regions, making the study of such regions critically important.
In the URMI (Urbanization, Mobilities and Immigration) project, the team studied the drivers of urbanisation and developed future-scenarios for Finland’s urbanisation in collaboration with stakeholders. Key change forces noted included immigration and future mobility. The project also produced a series of “Urban Analyses” (URMI Kaupunkianalyysi I–VI) covering topics such as geographic segregation of working‐age populations, migration of low‐income groups, health service usage by migrants, etc.
The BEMINE (Beyond MALPE-coordination: Integrative Envisioning) project examined how governance, collaboration networks, and active citizen participation should be positioned to support the wise and sustainable growth of future urban regions. The project advanced ongoing MALPE cooperation between the state and municipalities, integrating planning perspectives on land use, housing, transport, services, and economic activity.
Both projects underlined that urbanisation and urban region growth are pivotal issues for Finnish society’s future. It is not just about more people in cities, but about how regions interact, how sustainable development is achieved, and how equality and vitality are maintained.
The future of work (ca. 2016)
How will the fundamental nature of work and employment evolve, and what systemic changes are necessary in areas like lifelong learning, social security, and taxation to ensure a thriving, equitable future society? How can employers and educational systems meet the complex and unpredictable demands of the future labour market?
The Work2040 project (2016–2018) developed three future-scenarios for work by 2040, in collaboration with stakeholders including Sitra, Varma, Tieto Oyj, the Finnish Tax Administration and Trade Union Pro.
The project was initiated at a time of the previous “big wave” of societal discourse around the future of work: how digitalisation and “robots” will destroy jobs, with platform economy and gig jobs mainstreaming (at least in the US and slowly elsewhere too), and effects of globalisation (and its winners and losers) becoming visible.
The project’s key findings included: working forms and employment relationships will become more varied; the time- and place-dependence of work will weaken; lifelong learning will become more important; and income structures will change. The project emphasised that work is more than just jobs — it touches social security, taxation, pensions and how people experience everyday life — and that shaping the future of work is a way of shaping society’s future.
The Hidden Competences (2016–2019) project investigated how international experience translates into skills valuable in working life, and how often those competences remain invisible or “hidden.”
Traditional international competences such as language skills, cultural awareness and tolerance are acknowledged, but the project argued for a broader understanding. It identified additional valuable qualities gained through international exposure: curiosity, productivity, resilience (tenacity). These broader competences are increasingly important, especially as global megatrends make the labour market more complex and unpredictable. Despite this, many employers do not explicitly recognise or value these international competences in recruitment. As a result, individuals with such skills may appear “ordinary,” even though they carry significant, underused potential.
The project report calls on organisations, employers, educators and individuals themselves to become better at identifying, articulating and utilising these hidden competences: both as a way to improve employability and as a resource for businesses and society facing global challenges.
The work pulled us outward
The above examples show where we started and the seeds that led us to where we are today. In 2025, our commitment has evolved into taking accountability for spotting impact opportunities that create demonstrations of new practice, capable of changing a system. We are deeply pragmatic about this purpose. We draw hope from action, from each other, and the people we meet along the way. To see more of our recent work, you can explore some of it here.
In this way, the work always feels like it has just begun. Each of these efforts was an opening for us to ask ourselves: what are we really trying to build, and what does the work demand of us? Each turn drove us closer to evermore accountability: the feeling that we already hold ourselves responsible for how societies evolve, and that we want to be responsible for bringing others with us.
Most of all, we learnt that change only happens together. So, while this exercise has been about our self-reflection and looking back, it is only to show that we are here, we are trying, and we can’t wait to keep moving forward, together.
