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Our latest updates, thoughts, and events — as they roll out.
After almost ten years of existence Demos Helsinki takes a remarkable step forward: we launch Demos Effect to help businesses to reach for markets growing from wicked opportunities. “Wicked opportunities” arise from “wicked problems”, a category of problems like the climate change, natural resources scarcity, obesity and other lifestyle diseases, that differ from…
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The Nordic think tank Demos Helsinki is hosting the Smart Retro Meetup in Stockholm to celebrate sustainable service infrastructure. We’ll meet and connect with leaders and innovators from the built sector and beyond.
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The leading European innovation think tank Demos Helsinki is at South by Southwest* (SXSW) this weekend looking for friends. Demos Helsinki operates in Finland and Sweden and is known for its ability to turn future trends and innovations that drive social change. Both a think tank and an incubator for…
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The Circular Design Toolkit helps policymakers move beyond recycling by focusing on upstream design decisions that shape sustainable value chains and industrial transformation.
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Drawing on almost five years of Cities Mission implementation, Demos Helsinki and its partners from Dark Matter Labs and the Mission Board argue that mission governance has reached policy readiness. Its mechanisms have been tested, its governance infrastructure is in place, and it offers a transferable model for delivering on EU strategic priorities at scale.
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Finland managed the Covid-19 pandemic comparatively well. Yet the longer the crisis lasted, the more visible the limits of the governance system became. This brief examines what a prolonged crisis revealed about institutional strength, societal vulnerabilities, and the kind of governance future crises demand.
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What does a stronger Europe actually require? Demos Helsinki’s comments on the State of the Union.
September 18, 2026
Drawing on three EU-funded research projects, we examine the tensions behind von der Leyen’s State of the Union address. Technological sovereignty risks deepening the dependencies it aims to reduce; climate resilience requires funding architecture that lets mitigation and adaptation reinforce each other; and Europe’s strength cannot be measured by economic indicators alone. A stronger Europe, we argue, depends less on ambition than on governance capable of delivering it.
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The next frontier for circularity is governance
September 17, 2026
For cross-cutting policy issues, like the transition to circularity, Demos Helsinki has developed a model that works: beating uncertainty through action, empowering relevant stakeholders with autonomy in problem solving, building a shared coordination structure, and adapting through learning what works. The model has been proven to move the circularity agenda forward, despite its complexity and fluctuating political significance.
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Governing with cities: Europe’s overlooked governance infrastructure
July 21, 2026
The Cities Mission functioned as a natural experiment that revealed an overlooked property of European governance: cities do not merely implement policy more effectively; they generate governing capacity and governance knowledge that Europe should intentionally incorporate into policy design through a revised multilevel governance architecture.
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