Finnish Growth Company Development Service boosts business development

The Finnish Growth Company Development Service combines the expertise of public business service organisations for the use of companies in a new way. Through recognising development needs the Service focuses on improving company-specific growth conditions and speeding up the growth. The customers see the operating model as an easier way of finding the services and experts that suit to their companies’ needs.

The organisations at the background of the Finnish Growth Company Development Service, Finnvera plc, Finpro, the National Technology Agency Tekes and the regional Employment and Economic Development Centres, seek to reach better results with the new operating model. The Service is aimed at a more comprehensive examination of a company’s development.

"With the Growth Company Development Service we managed to conclude a big company acquisition faster and in a more professional way than what it would otherwise have been possible. This is so because the representatives of Finnvera, Finpro, Tekes and the T&E Centre working in the regional service team of the Service already knew our business. Then the cooperation aiming to promote the company’s business is genuinely useful, also when we are already all absorbed in our business," says Executive Chairman Ulf Hedberg from Almaco Group Oy. According to Mr Hedberg, the strength of the Growth Company Development Service lies, besides in close and broad-based cooperation, in innovative development solutions, which are found within the service team together with the entrepreneur along with longer-term development projects. "The organisations providing the Growth Company Development Service have become, on the strategic level, long-term partners to Almaco Group Oy," states Mr Hedberg on behalf of his company, which operates in the shipbuilding business in Raisio.

"The Finnish Growth Company Development Service has been a novel way for us of developing our operations with business services. Earlier we worked mainly with a T&E Centre and Finpro only. Through the Service we can now, during the one and same meeting, get more expertise along with Finnvera and Tekes", states Managing Director Lasse Lehtimäki from Bobicompany Oy. "As our business has grown into a network of several firms in which the same need for information or financing may concern many companies, the Growth Company Development Service can actually speed up the development of the company and make it easier", he continues. According to Mr Lehtimäki the Service can also boost the business of this network of companies, which manufactures mailboxes, because the development of the business is planned together. "The Growth Company Development Service and our business have a common main thread, the network. We operate together with our partners in a planned way," Mr Lehtimäki crystallises the experiences of his business network, which operates in Vaasa and the surrounding regions.

Further information

Director General Kalle J. Korhonen, Ministry of Trade and Industry, tel. +358 9 1606 3686
Managing Director Markku Mäkinen, Finnvera plc, tel. +358 20 460 7321
President Tapani Kaskeala, Finpro, tel. +358 204 695 402
Director General Veli-Pekka Saarnivaara, Tekes, tel. +358 10 521 5700
Director Antti Koho, T&E Centre for South-West Finland, tel. +358 400 264 424