BRIDGE – A Sustainable Network of HEIs and SMEs in the Barents Region

Introduction PETER FISCHER MINTTU MERIVIRTA Over three years, teachers and staff from five universities in Russia, Finland and Norway created bonds for innovation and education in the Arctic North of Europe. More than 50 small private and public companies participated assigning around 250 students with business life challenges.

The network of so many players was not, of course, created in some weeks or months. The network emerged over more than ten years of cooperation between partners. Small bilateral projects across borders for Russian, Finnish and Norwegian students became the basis of trust, of learning from each other and finally revealed common interests.

Practice Future was the previous project in business innovation that gathered some partners who in 2017 built the BRIDGE team. The former project served as a kind of master plan (see Chen, Merivirta & Smirnova 2014). Experience from Practice Future led to the question: What do small companies expect from cooperation with Higher Education Institute (HEI)? Communication with local businesses was essential for designing the BRIDGE project. The exchange convinced us not only to build the project on multidisciplinary teams of students, but also on the diversity of participating university departments: tourism, humanities, business marketing, entrepreneurship and innovation, and engineering.

The BRIDGE project’s objective has been to facilitate youth employment and economic growth by building a joint education platform HEI-SME for the Barents Euro-Arctic Region of Russia, Norway and Finland. In the project, international groups of students conducted research for companies as well as solved tasks in product or service innovation, customer development, and market entry. The project implementation period was 2018-2021, and the project was financed by CBC Kolarctic 2014-2020. (Kolarctic BRIDGE 2021.)

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