From Connection to Shared Growth
VIA brings companies, experts and partners together to explore what growth and innovation require: knowledge, talent, fresh perspectives and useful connections.
Meetings surface experiences, ideas, needs and opportunities. VIA connects what emerges and carries it into future conversations, decisions and collaborations.
Over time, relationships deepen and shared knowledge grows. Technology and AI enter the exchange when they support real business needs.
This is how an active business ecosystem grows: through connections and knowledge that build over time.
An Ecosystem That Grow, Cycle After Cycle
- 1 October 2026
Playground 1 - 27 October 2026
Collaborative
Playground - 17 November 2026
Playground 2 - 20 January 2027
Outlook
Event
1 October 2026
Playground 1 — Opening
Aviapolis | Knowledge & Talent Capital
Playground 1 opens Phase 2 through an Experience Learning format.
Selected SMEs share real growth stories: what worked, what did not, and where growth got stuck.
The session focuses on two Phase 1 priorities: access to the right knowledge and the capacity to turn learning into action.
Participants leave with the Growth-Gap Map, a practical tool to better read their growth challenges and continue working on them across VIA.
Aviapolis connects the session to Vantaa’s wider growth infrastructure and Future Tech City context.
27 October 2026
Collaborative Playground — with Crazy Town
Business Vantaa Week | David & Goliath Co-Innovation
The Collaborative Playground moves VIA into a practical buyer-supplier setting.
During Business Vantaa Week, curated SMEs meet larger buyer-side counterparts through structured scoping conversations.
The goal is not another pitch, but a clearer next step: understanding buyer needs, defining a realistic pilot and framing an actionable first scope.
The output is practical: a pilot conversation, a scope note, or a clear decision on whether to proceed.
17 November 2026
Playground 2 — Deepening
Tikkurila | Knowledge, Talent & Decision Capacity
Playground 2 brings the October work back into the room.
Companies revisit their challenges, share what changed and identify what now requires a decision.
The Growth-Gap Map is expanded through peer learning and new tools. Technology and AI enter the discussion only where they have produced real value in practice.
Tikkurila connects the session to Vantaa’s talent, education and competence-development agenda.
20 January 2027
Bridge Outlook
Hybrid | What the Room Said — Reported
The Bridge Outlook closes the 2026 arc and creates the bridge into 2027.
It is a public sense-making moment combining data, ecosystem reflection and institutional discussion.
The Outlook captures what emerged across the autumn sessions: company stories, Growth-Gap insights, decisions and recurring knowledge, talent and technology patterns.
The aim is to make the learning visible, documented and usable.
The Bridge Outlook positions VIA as ecosystem intelligence infrastructure: turning company experience into shared knowledge connected to Vantaa’s growth agenda.
Cross Phase — International Hub Roadmap
Cross-Border Intelligence — Milan Bridge
Innovation does not scale in isolation.
The Milan Bridge connects Vantaa and Milan through targeted exchanges between companies, experts and innovation actors from two complementary ecosystems. It can start online, through curated conversations and challenge-based sessions, and evolve into physical meetings or deeper collaboration formats.
The goal is not international exposure for its own sake. It is to help companies test assumptions in a different European context, discover adjacent solutions and open practical collaboration pathways.
Companies bring real challenges. They leave with sharper perspectives, better questions and possible cross-border directions.
For Vantaa, this becomes a bridge into European validation: practical exchange first, symbolic networking last.
Ready to be part of it?
VIA is a space where meaningful connections become real progress.
You meet companies and experts who bring perspective, share relevant experience and help you move faster with clarity.
What you take away is not just contacts,
but trusted relationships, new directions and tangible progress.