Altogether 24 ideas developed in the SEB Innovation Centre over one year

According to the head of SEB, Allan Parik, the innovation centre is the contribution of SEB to securing sustainable and broad-based economic growth of Estonia through supporting entrepreneurs and stimulating cooperation.

Allan Parik, the head of SEB, said that the innovation centre is one of the ways of how SEB has taken on the role of an active leader in developing and supporting Estonia’s economic life. “Opening of the innovation centre in Tallinn was mainly triggered by the wish to help business clients advance their operations, improve their competitiveness and thereby contribute even more to Estonia’s economic growth,” Parik said. According to him, one should also definitely not underestimate the events and training of the innovation centre, targeted at private clients and school children, which have quickly gained popularity.

In just over a year, more than 130 programmes, events and hackathons have been organised in the innovation centre, aimed at entrepreneurs, private clients as well as students and pupils. More than 3,000 people have visited the centre and 24 business ideas have been created within these events, which our enterprises want to use to expand their reach locally as well as on export markets. The activities of the centre extend beyond its walls thanks to live broadcasts of Facebook, through which more than 250 thousand people have had the possibility to share the inspiration and events of the innovation centre.

SEB Innovation Centre operates alongside SEB’s Growth Programme, constituting a world-class study programme. The innovation centre, acting in synergy with the growth programme, forms a kind of incubation environment for enterprises that want to develop and expand their business activity. “The growth programme is our so-called third pillar in the innovation activity, through which we contribute to the establishment of a stronger and more competitive economic environment,” noted Parik.

According to Parik, it is important to understand that just like open banking influences the banking sector, other sectors from retail trade up to traditional sectors are also involved in the changes. “The development of technology and the changing market make almost everyone reassess their business models to a lesser or greater extent – this is where the growth programme comes, in which the entrepreneurs can do it with the support of a well-considered training programme and top-class mentors,” Parik explains. According to the head of SEB, we can hopefully already see the new success stories of individual companies as well as increasing cooperation between companies and research institutions soon, which in turn would support the dissemination of technology by sectors and the creation of new jobs with high added value.

From a longer perspective, the goal of the SEB Innovation Centre is to consolidate ambitious enterprises, who with the help of the incubation programme offered by SEB, but also in cooperation with each other, would form a broad-based group of companies, which in the future contributes to the development of Estonia. High interest in participation in the growth programme and the large number of visitors to the innovation centre demonstrate the usefulness and future potential of the project. “The doors of the innovation centre are open to all businesses and entrepreneurial minds, who wish to develop their business ideas together with experts from SEB as well as elsewhere,” said Parik.