Espoo Mayor’s Innovation Competition launched

The competition is open to all City of Espoo employees and work teams together with their partners as well as Espoo-based companies. The home municipality of the company must be Espoo. 

The competition seeks innovations and ideas on how we can improve the services we provide for Espoo residents and develop our practices in keeping with the Espoo Story. 

We are paying particular attention on innovations that prioritise customers and city residents − either as recipients of improved services or even as cooperation partners in the development work. The purpose of the competition is to highlight the continuous, innovative development work that is being carried out in Espoo. 

The City of Espoo is organising the competition in cooperation with Excellence Finland. A panel of experts from Excellence Finland will evaluate the applications and select the finalists from among them. Later, the City of Espoo’s own competition jury will evaluate the applications that have made it to the final. 

Please make sure you fill in your application form carefully so that anyone who is not familiar with the context can gain a clear idea of your innovation and be able to assess its quality and novelty value based on the application form alone. A competition information session will be organised as a Teams webinar(external link, opens in a new window) on 7 April 2022 at 15:00–16:00 (in Finnish). The webinar will provide concrete application tips, and the event will also be available as a recording. 

Applications will also automatically take part in Excellence Finland’s national Quality Innovation Award competition, and the winners of the award will also compete in an international competition. 

The 2022 competition is seeking resident and customer-oriented innovations under two series: 

1. Innovations series. New innovations that have already proven to solve challenges efficiently or productively. 
2. Potential innovations series. New innovations that are still in the development phase and have the potential to solve challenges effectively or productively. 

The winner of the Innovation series, or winners if first place is shared between several innovations, will each be awarded with €5,000. The winner(s) of the Potential Innovations series will be rewarded with €3,000. In addition, honorary mentions worth €500 each will be distributed in both series at the jury’s discretion. 

Application evaluation criteria 

Competition application form(external link, opens in a new window)  
Instructions for completing the form  
Read the instructions carefully. You can fill in the form in several parts. Save the incomplete form using the ‘Save and continue later’ button at the bottom of the form. The system will ask for your e-mail address to send a link to continue completing the form later.  

​​​​​​Competition is open: 6 April–24 May 2022   

• Information session as a Teams webinar(external link, opens in a new window): 7 April 2022 at 15:00–16:00 (In Finnish; the webinar will provide concrete application tips, and the event will also be available as a recording. If you have difficulties joining the webinar, please contact Susanna Kilappa, susanna.kilappa@espoo.fi, tel. +358 50 5446044) 
• Excellence Finland will evaluate the applications by 30 June 2022.  
• All participants will receive a notification on whether or not their proposal has made it to the final: 1 July 2022 
• The finalists will give a brief presentation on their innovation to the city management 13 September 2022. 
• After that, in September, the City of Espoo’s competition jury will convene.  
• A proposal of the winners and honorary mentions will be presented to the Mayor and after that to the city's Management Group in late September.  
• The award ceremony will be held in October (time to be specified). 
• The winners of Excellence Finland’s national Quality Innovation Award will be announced on 10 November 2022.  

The Mayor’s Innovation Competition has been organised in cooperation with Excellence Finland since 2012. 

Excellence Finland’s Quality Innovation Award(external link, opens in a new window)  

Issues related to completing the competition application: Minna Huomo, Excellence Finland, tel. +358 40 0230756 or minna.huomo@laatukeskus.fi 

General information on the competition: Marianne Julkunen, Service Development, Mayor´s Office, City of Espoo, tel. +358 40 55483606 or marianne.julkunen@espoo.fi