By donating to the Entrepreneurship and Innovations focus area, you support a sustainable future – and the people who are building it. People who dare to experiment boldly, even when the outcome is uncertain.
As a donor, you become part of a chain of enablers providing spaces, mentoring, inspiration, and expertise to an ever-growing startup-generation.
Your donation fosters entrepreneurial thinking among our students and researchers, and drives forward innovations such as microscopy technology for cancer treatment and energy-efficient solutions for electric vehicle battery recycling, just to mention a few.
91ÇàÇà²Ý to advance entrepreneurship and innovations
Janne Laine, Vice President, Innovation EcosystemA donation in support of entrepreneurship and innovations is an investment in a thriving society.
Companies founded by Aalto alumni already employ over 30,000 people. Our Otaniemi campus is home to 170 companies, and we offer 53,000 m² of space for businesses to use. Since Aalto University – established as innovation university – began its operations in 2010, we have negotiated over 350 technology transfers.
An entrepreneurial mindset is a fundamental part of all our educational offerings. Entrepreneurship courses are available across all fields of study, and student-driven business activities are strongly supported through access to facilities and funding.
The university's entrepreneurship ecosystem is powered by both student-led activities and the university's own research and innovation centers.
Every year, around 100 companies are founded within our ecosystem. More than half of all university-born startups in Finland get their start at Aalto. Not all of them grow into success stories – but some do! And those that do drive forward our entire society, measured in wellbeing, employment and investments.
A bright and sustainable future needs bold individuals who dare to try and fail – and try again.
Donations in this area are used for developing and further extending entrepreneurship education and for training and mentoring startup founders.
Donations are needed, for example, to support research groups in taking their research to the next level and making their first invention disclosure. This phase is a crucial step towards patenting.
Research results must be brought to a concrete level, demonstrating the innovation's functionality in a new product or concept (proof of concept). Funding is also needed for these critical validation and pre-commercialisation phases.
Typically the funding needed is between €10,000 and €20,000 per project. In practice, this means that if, for example, the approximately 2,100 new master’s graduates each year invested in the future employers by donating just € 10, we would already have enough seed funding for one, or even two, innovation-driven startups.
Even small donations are meaningful when donors are many.
Slush – one of the world's largest startup events – and Junction – Europe's leading hackathon – are just a few examples of the Aaltonian entrepreneurial spirit, creativity and culture of daring.
In addition to entrepreneurship focused degrees, we offer a variety of individual courses and events that foster entrepreneurial mindset, as well as startup communities and accelerators that are all popular with students.
In 2010, an advanced course in space technology figuratively launched Finland's first satellite – the literal launch occurred in Midsummer 2017. In 2025, dozens of Finnish satellites are orbiting the Earth and Otaniemi has become a bustling space campus, home to an ESA accelerator and numerous companies in the field of space technology. One of these companies is Iceye, which has grown to unicorn proportions and has its roots in the student cohort of Aalto-1 satellite course.
We witness similar inspiring and promising initiatives every year, for example, the Design Factory at the heart of the campus hosts an annual product development course where multidisciplinary teams of students solve real-life challenges set by business partners. With a budget of €10 000, the course has produced inventive ideas ranging from edible packaging to a high-precision crane, and from a 3D body scanner to a dog-training robot.
Craftsmanship, problem solving and confidence, prototyping, ideation and design thinking are taught also in many other courses. One of these is ³§Ã¤³ó°ìö±è²¹Âá²¹, open to all students and one of Aalto's most popular courses year after year, where students work in teams to create inventive electronic devices. In the mechatronics project courses, students build smart devices ranging from automatic coffee powder dispensers to wearable health technology.
Aalto University was established as an innovation university. Year by year, we aim to increase the number of invention disclosures, patents and further innovations and startups utilising the knowledge and creativity cultivated in each of the six schools.
The first step in creating a research-based company is the right mindset: we help our researchers turn their research ideas into viable products and business plans.
Researchers are not necessarily born entrepreneurs, and outside investors are not necessarily detailed experts in the field they are investing in. Aalto's Entrepreneurship and Innovations Ecosystem brings together experts from different fields and provides services to help startups.
We help researchers to mature their inventions and apply for patent protection, and to transfer technology to startups or larger companies. The Aalto Startup Center strengthens the commercial conditions of emerging companies and connects students, researchers, startup-founders and financiers.
In the future, more than ever, we continue to need open-minded thinkers and brave doers who dare to jump into the unknown, and take on even the crazy ideas.
Being outside of one's comfort-zone is not the most productive place to be for everyone. Yet, society needs decision-makers and leaders who can, not just withstand but prosper, in uncertainty and complexity.
Textbooks teach the basics, but in challenging situations creativity, application, and cross-sector collaboration are needed. Creative thinking and action models help move forward even in deadlocks: because there is no singular resolution, there are always many directions to proceed. Often even the researchers themselves cannot imagine all the innovations to which their work will eventually lead.
Aalto University's public core funding from the Ministry of Education and Culture has decreased in real terms by more than one-third compared to 2010, when the university began its operations. Currently, the basic-funding accounts approximately 50 % of the university's annual expenses.
As a society, we cannot afford to cut back on education and research.
To ensure groundbreaking research and bold, persistent innovators in the future, we must invest in both long-term fundamental research and targeted innovation efforts.
91ÇàÇà²Ý and you’ll invest in a future you can be proud of.
By donating specifically towards the advancement of entrepreneurship and innovations, you'll accelerate our students' entrepreneurial spirit and promote groundbreaking research, such as the development of fog- and dirt-repellent surfaces, personalised cancer medication and 100 % bio-based, plastic-replacing bubble and foam packaging materials.
Support prosperity of the society by donating towards entrepreneurial thinking and commercialisation of ideas.
If you are considering giving 10 000 euros or more, please get in touch with Sinikka Heikkala.
Behind Aalto's entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem are both student-led entrepreneurial activities and the university's own research and innovation hubs.
Every year approximately 100 companies are founded in our innovation ecosystem and the total value of the companies founded by our alumni exceeds 30B€. Take a look at our current Research to business -teams (prebusiness), spinouts, startups and alumni companies.
The Makers of the Impossible exhibition showcases seven wonderful examples of actions by Aaltonians. You can explore them online or in our brand-new Marsio building on campus. Welcome!
The invention of a microscopic spectral sensor that can identify myriad materials with unprecedented accuracy is set to overhaul our approach to healthcare, food safety and more.
Juho Uzkurt Kaljunen founded NPHarvest Oy based on his doctoral thesis with the aim of improving the nutrient cycle by recovering minerals from wastewater. The company’s first round of funding was a success.
The project combined qualitative evolutionary design and visual generative artificial intelligence, for the first time.
The Hydrogen Innovation Centre Doctoral School aims to be an active community of doctoral researchers from different fields such as chemistry, energy technology, electrical engineering as well as energy systems.
Integrate an entrepreneurial mindset into your course and curricula with competencies drafted by the Aalto Co-Educator team.
This autumn’s creative industry pre-incubator program began on the 1st of October. Twelve new teams started developing their business ideas with Aalto Startup Center’s business advisors and Aalto Studios’ creative industry experts.
Aalto-yliopisto osallistuu kasvuyritystapahtuma Slushiin esittelemällä 12 uutta innovaatioprojektia, jotka muuttavat maailmaa. Tänä vuonna osastollamme on mahdollisuus tutustua myös uudistavalle liiketoiminnalle olennaisen radikaalin luovuuden työkaluihin.
Aalto University students develop prototype of durable wood-based insole – Finnish shoe company starts testing material on users this autumn
Professor Ali Tehrani and his research group focus on something very familiar to us all – textiles.
In Finland, almost all waste wood from construction ends up being burned, even though it could play a major role in the development of ecological growing media. New research shows that steam-treated waste wood can replace peat as a growing medium and offers promising results in plant germination and root growth.
The innovation diary is a cumulative story following a multidisciplinary innovation team that received funding from Business Finland for 18 months in January 2023. You are welcome to follow the story of team WUUD, a joint project with the school of Arts and school of chemical engineering. The end product is an evironmentally friendly and durable wooden design cladding. The diary is by written by team lead Hemmo Honkonen.
Deep tech companies that got their start at Aalto University include IQM, ICEYE, Ioncell and Mustekala.
