• Presentation by Janne Järvinen, Business Finland

Key takeaways from this session: 

• Embrace a Digital-Native Mindset: Companies need to adopt a digital-native mindset to stay competitive in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. By understanding and integrating the key components of digital-native companies—business, culture, and technology—traditional companies can transform their operations and achieve significant growth.

• Leverage Data and Technology for Innovation: Businesses should focus on collecting and analyzing data to understand customer needs and market trends, enabling them to develop personalized and scalable solutions.

• Utilize EU Funding and Networks: Take advantage of the funding opportunities and data networks provided by the EU. Programs like Horizon Europe and Business Finland's national funding instruments can support innovation and development projects.

Check out the playbooks published by Business Finland's Digital Native Finland mission and the Data Economy program here. These playbooks help SMEs in particular to build a growing business by becoming digitally innovative, using the data economy and EU legislation.

• Workshop: How can organisations turn valuable data into competitive advantage?

This workshop focuses on how organisations can better activate the data they already manage, alongside trusted external sources, to support more strategic, ethical, and future-oriented decisions in a fast-changing labour and innovation landscape.

Hosted by Headai and DIGITALEUROPE, the session contributes to the development of the LEADSx2030 Data Hub: a collaborative platform designed to bring together labour market signals, ecosystem knowledge, and organisation-level data in a purpose-driven and privacy-respecting way. The building blocks exist but turning data into value requires governance models, interoperability, and real implementation. Participants will examine how to move from siloed datasets and dashboards to decision-ready infrastructures. Instead of reimagining the future, we’ll focus on what can be done now with the data already at hand.

The session includes:

• A live demo of the Data Hub prototype
• Dialogue around what data and features deliver strategic value
• Exchange on barriers to implementation and practical design needs

This workshop is for decision-makers in innovation, education, workforce, and digital strategy, people responsible for connecting insights to action. It offers a space to help shape an applied, human-centric model for data use that enhances competitiveness, strengthens trust, and enables meaningful change across sectors.

This session is hosted by Harri Ketamo.