KLAK - Icelandic Startups has joined a new collaborative project together with five other innovation ecosystem organisations from across the Nordic and Baltic region. The project, Nordic Innovation Ecosystem Mobilisation, is commissioned and funded by Nordic Innovation and sets out to map, benchmark, and strengthen startup ecosystems across the Nordics.
The consortium brings together six organisations that are themselves active parts of their national innovation ecosystems - not external analysts, but organisations with years of accumulated domain knowledge and established relationships across government, academia, capital, and industry. Each partner brings a distinct strength to the work:
- SISP (Sweden): Nordic coordination and overall project management, system-level insight, policy relevance.
- Smart Innovation Norway (Norway): Overall contractual responsibility, financial administration, governance and coordination towards Nordic Innovation.
- TechBBQ (Denmark): Direct access to startup, scaleup, investor, corporate, and international innovation communities.
- Maria 01 (Finland): The Nordics' largest startup hub, contributing strong international networks and facilitating collaboration across startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem actors.
- KLAK – Icelandic Startups (Ísland): Insights from a small, highly connected ecosystem with rapid feedback loops and high international exposure.
- Startup Estonia (Estonia): National startup ecosystem development, strong public–private coordination, and deep experience in digital governance, scaleup policy, and international talent attraction.
The mix is intentional. Rather than bringing in outside expertise, Nordic Innovation has assembled a group of organisations that already sit at the centre of their respective ecosystems - and that brings a different kind of value to the analysis.
A new analytical framework
The project applies an updated, startup-centric model of the Quadruple Helix framework, extended with two additional stakeholder groups to form more of a "Hexuple Helix" - reflecting the full range of actors shaping how startups emerge, grow, and scale in the Nordic region. Each country is analysed across six dimensions: Policy & Governance, Finance & Capital, Research & Knowledge, Innovation Support, Industry & Corporates, and Startups & Scaleups - covering the full journey from pre-seed to unicorn.
"The Nordic and Baltic countries each have genuine strengths in innovation, but we rarely look at ourselves together as a coherent region. What makes this project different is that the analysis is being done by organisations that live inside these ecosystems every day. Each partner brings a level of contextual understanding and trusted access that no outside consultancy could replicate. We are not just mapping the Nordic innovation landscape - we are mobilising it,"
says Ellinor Bokedal, Project Manager and Policy Director at SISP
"Collaboration across the Nordics is essential to unlocking the full potential of our innovation ecosystems. This project helps build a shared understanding that can strengthen both individual countries and the region as a whole,"
says Ásta Sóllilja Guðmundsdóttir, CEO of KLAK - Icelandic Startups..
Results to be presented at TechBBQ in August
The project's findings - a consolidated Nordic ecosystem overview, identified systemic gaps and leverage points, and a prioritised coordination architecture for future cross-border collaboration - will be presented at TechBBQ in Copenhagen in August. TechBBQ, itself a consortium partner, is one of the Nordic region's most significant gatherings of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem builders - a natural stage for results aimed at mobilising the region's innovation actors.
More information: nordicinnovation.org/programs/nordic-innovation-ecosystem-mobilisation
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