By donating to the Entrepreneurship and Innovations focus area, you support a sustainable future – and the people who are building it. People who dare to experiment boldly, even when the outcome is uncertain.
As a donor, you become part of a chain of enablers providing spaces, mentoring, inspiration, and expertise to an ever-growing startup-generation.
Your donation fosters entrepreneurial thinking among our students and researchers, and drives forward innovations such as microscopy technology for cancer treatment and energy-efficient solutions for electric vehicle battery recycling, just to mention a few.
ÄûÃʵ¼º½ to advance entrepreneurship and innovations
Janne Laine, Vice President, Innovation EcosystemA donation in support of entrepreneurship and innovations is an investment in a thriving society.
Donations in this area are used for developing and further extending entrepreneurship education and for training and mentoring startup founders.
Donations are needed, for example, to support research groups in taking their research to the next level and making their first invention disclosure. This phase is a crucial step towards patenting.
Research results must be brought to a concrete level, demonstrating the innovation's functionality in a new product or concept (proof of concept). Funding is also needed for these critical validation and pre-commercialisation phases.
Typically the funding needed is between €10.000 and €20.000 per project. In practice, this means that if, for example, the approximately 2.100 new master’s graduates each year invested in the future employers by donating just € 10, we would already have enough seed funding for one, or even two, innovation-driven startups.
Even small donations are meaningful when donors are many.
Slush – one of the world's largest startup events – and Junction – Europe's leading hackathon – are just a few examples of the Aaltonian entrepreneurial spirit, creativity and culture of daring.
In addition to entrepreneurship focused degrees, we offer a variety of individual courses and events that foster entrepreneurial mindset, as well as startup communities and accelerators that are all popular with students.
In 2010, an advanced course in space technology figuratively launched Finland's first satellite – the literal launch occurred in Midsummer 2017. In 2025, dozens of Finnish satellites are orbiting the Earth and Otaniemi has become a bustling space campus, home to an ESA accelerator and numerous companies in the field of space technology. One of these companies is Iceye, which has grown to unicorn proportions and has its roots in the student cohort of Aalto-1 satellite course.
We witness similar inspiring and promising initiatives every year, for example, the Design Factory at the heart of the campus hosts an annual product development course where multidisciplinary teams of students solve real-life challenges set by business partners. With a budget of €10 000, the course has produced inventive ideas ranging from edible packaging to a high-precision crane, and from a 3D body scanner to a dog-training robot.
Craftsmanship, problem solving and confidence, prototyping, ideation and design thinking are taught also in many other courses. One of these is ³§Ã¤³ó°ìö±è²¹Âá²¹, open to all students and one of Aalto's most popular courses year after year, where students work in teams to create inventive electronic devices. In the mechatronics project courses, students build smart devices ranging from automatic coffee powder dispensers to wearable health technology.
Aalto University was established as an innovation university. Year by year, we aim to increase the number of invention disclosures, patents and further innovations and startups utilising the knowledge and creativity cultivated in each of the six schools.
The first step in creating a research-based company is the right mindset: we help our researchers turn their research ideas into viable products and business plans.
Researchers are not necessarily born entrepreneurs, and outside investors are not necessarily detailed experts in the field they are investing in. Aalto's Entrepreneurship and Innovations Ecosystem brings together experts from different fields and provides services to help startups.
We help researchers to mature their inventions and apply for patent protection, and to transfer technology to startups or larger companies. The Aalto Startup Center strengthens the commercial conditions of emerging companies and connects students, researchers, startup-founders and financiers.
Support prosperity of the society by donating towards entrepreneurial thinking and commercialisation of ideas.
If you are considering giving 10 000 euros or more, please get in touch with Sinikka Heikkala.
Företagande och en startup-anda syns överallt inom Aalto-gemenskapen. Vare sig du är en studerande intresserad av företagarutbildning eller en företagare som behöver en kick i din verksamhet – välkommen med!
Aalto University's innovation ecosystem generates tens of new companies annually, founded by our students and alumni. In this portfolio are presented all our current Research to business -teams (prebusiness) and selected spinouts, startups and alumni companies.
The Makers of the Impossible exhibition showcases seven wonderful examples of actions by Aaltonians. You can explore them online or in our brand-new Marsio building on campus. Welcome!
Agate Sensors, a startup originating from Aalto University, has raised €5.6 million in funding for its spectral sensor technology
The invention of a microscopic spectral sensor that can identify myriad materials with unprecedented accuracy is set to overhaul our approach to healthcare, food safety and more.
Juho Uzkurt Kaljunen founded NPHarvest Oy based on his doctoral thesis with the aim of improving the nutrient cycle by recovering minerals from wastewater. The company’s first round of funding was a success.
The project combined qualitative evolutionary design and visual generative artificial intelligence, for the first time.
The Hydrogen Innovation Centre Doctoral School aims to be an active community of doctoral researchers from different fields such as chemistry, energy technology, electrical engineering as well as energy systems.
Integrate an entrepreneurial mindset into your course and curricula with competencies drafted by the Aalto Co-Educator team.
This autumn’s creative industry pre-incubator program began on the 1st of October. Twelve new teams started developing their business ideas with Aalto Startup Center’s business advisors and Aalto Studios’ creative industry experts.
Aalto-yliopisto osallistuu kasvuyritystapahtuma Slushiin esittelemällä 12 uutta innovaatioprojektia, jotka muuttavat maailmaa. Tänä vuonna osastollamme on mahdollisuus tutustua myös uudistavalle liiketoiminnalle olennaisen radikaalin luovuuden työkaluihin.
Aalto University students develop prototype of durable wood-based insole – Finnish shoe company starts testing material on users this autumn
Professor Ali Tehrani and his research group focus on something very familiar to us all – textiles.
In Finland, almost all waste wood from construction ends up being burned, even though it could play a major role in the development of ecological growing media. New research shows that steam-treated waste wood can replace peat as a growing medium and offers promising results in plant germination and root growth.
Deep tech companies that got their start at Aalto University include IQM, ICEYE, Ioncell and Mustekala.
