The Humble Timber alliance, a 9-actor collaboration in Finland, identified key barriers to timber construction, proposed solutions, and delegated responsibilities to accelerate carbon-neutral building. By fostering cross-sector cooperation, they addressed demand, supply, governance, and skills challenges, aiming to scale timber use in construction and promote sustainable urban development.
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The big “how”: New ways to govern industrial policy
July 13, 2023
Effective governance is crucial in the face of uncertainty, not only to resolve problems of coordination but to carve out long-term strategies that don’t risk other crucial societal objectives. We share a series of methodologies specifically designed for coordinating industrial policy despite strategic uncertainty.
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Humble Timber: The results
June 27, 2022
The Humble Timber alliance, a 9-actor collaboration in Finland, identified key barriers to timber construction, proposed solutions, and delegated responsibilities to accelerate carbon-neutral building. By fostering cross-sector cooperation, they addressed demand, supply, governance, and skills challenges, aiming to scale timber use in construction and promote sustainable urban development.
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Humble Timber: Building towards a carbon-neutral future
March 9, 2022
Timber buildings offer a sustainable solution to decarbonizing construction. The Humble Timber alliance, led by Demos Helsinki, brings together key stakeholders in Finland’s building industry to address challenges in transitioning to carbon-neutral construction. By fostering collaboration and identifying shared goals, the alliance aims to overcome barriers like the supply-demand dilemma and promote timber as a competitive and sustainable building material for the future.
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A humble approach
September 10, 2021
Our mission is to imagine and co-create a vision and a reality for the next era. We exist to help bring about the transformative change that recognizes today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and crises and imagines new paths forward that are fair, sustainable, and joyful. Our time requires a…
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Demos Helsinki Impact Model
November 19, 2020
Our Societal Impact The reason for the existence of Demos Helsinki is motivated by the urge for societal transformation. Demos Helsinki Impact model is a tool to make this transformation explicit and to steer our operations towards societal impact. We will not reach this goal within closed doors. We will…
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It’s time to go beyond experimentation – Demos Helsinki in the OECD
November 19, 2018
Over the last years, it has become obvious that governments could benefit a lot more from experimentation. Experimentation helps co-designing solutions, policies, and services together with potential end users. It mitigates risks because it enables the fast process of turning ideas into practice. Without immediate ‘fear of implementation’, governments are…
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What do we talk about when we talk about strategic foresight
August 29, 2018
To make it simple, the role of strategic foresight should be as the informant, the source of knowledge, the basis for strategic planning and decision-making. After all, without incorporating any foresight to your decision-making, you will be making decisions that are only based on current conditions and as we all…
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Seven reasons why your company should do scenarios as part of strategic foresight
August 29, 2018
The aim of strategic foresight is to find insight in long-term trends that are observable and actionable today. The method to do this is the creation of alternative futures. There are two main tools to create alternative futures: future states, which are like “a photo taken from the future”, and…
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Why your company needs strategic foresight and what will result out of it
August 29, 2018
The role of foresight should be as the basis for strategic planning and decision-making – it challenges the company to redefine its strategies to fit societal development better. It is important to remember that strategic foresight is not about predicting the future, which is inherently impossible. When we talk about…
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From Measuring Research Impact to Maximising It
July 10, 2018
The way in which science and the rest of society interact with each other significantly moulds which direction our society progresses in. Once research funding better understands the non-linear nature of the social impact of research, this interaction can be greatly improved.
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Reframing the future of Finland – with newcomers
October 20, 2017
Cultural diversity is on the rise in Finland, but does the institutional landscape reflect that fact? Do the newcomers – migrants of different kinds – have access to the institutions? Does their presence shape the cultural narrative of this society? These are among the questions that we have recently tried…
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Tekes Views: The future looks smart
March 2, 2016
Tekes Views published yesterday a 4-page article about Demos Helsinki’s work on resource smart economy. In the article, Maria Ritola explains how scarcity of resources will be a game changer of our future lifestyles. ”Change is already here”, Ritola outlines. ”If you look at headlines from Google, Uber, Facebook or…
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