During Finland’s membership of the EU since 1995, a distinct heat entrepreneurship knowledge cluster has formed in South Ostrobothnia, which consists of heat entrepreneurs, heat entrepreneurship units, regional developers, trainers and researchers as wells as manufacturers of machines and equipment for the whole production chain of forest energy. In Finland there are about 500 heat energy plants, run by entrepreneurs, of which a fifth are in South Ostrobothnia. There are plenty of opportunities for foreign actors to utilise this knowledge cluster and the region’s companies and other actors in international knowledge transfer.
The HECSO development project has assembled the heat entrepreneurship knowledge cluster of South Ostrobothnia. The knowledge cluster has been made to utilise, in many different ways, the companies located in the region, other actors in the region and the internationalisation of the whole province.
A principal component of internationalisation is the knowledge cluster’s training package on heat entrepreneurship, which is on offer to interested foreign target groups. Vocational Adult Education Sedu is responsible for the training. The training package lasts for one week, and is compiled through co-operation with the Finnish Forest Centre and regional heat entrepreneurs and machine and equipment manufacturers.
