3.9.2024
The business community Crazy Town and the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management at LUT University are starting a collaboration aimed at strengthening cooperation between LUT University and businesses in the Päijät-Häme region, as well as supporting local companies in enhancing sustainability and competitiveness.
The collaboration will also promote the emergence of student entrepreneurship and startups in Lahti.
Tailored support for business needs
The first focus of the collaboration relates to the cooperation between industrial engineering, the mechatronics field, and businesses. LUT University has established a sustainable mechatronics professorship in Lahti, which supports local companies in developing more sustainable and innovative solutions. Mechatronics combines mechanics, electronics, and computer science and plays a key role in the digitalization and automation of industry. The field significantly impacts the promotion of sustainable development.
The needs of the mechatronics sector in the Päijät-Häme region will be addressed with a series of workshops produced by Crazy Town and LUT starting in autumn 2024, which will bring together LUT experts and local mechatronics companies. Companies will present their development needs, for which LUT will tailor solutions. These may include, for example, student theses, research projects, or other innovation activities. The first workshop will be held on September 25.
The themes of the following workshop series will be specified later.
Impact on business growth in Lahti
Crazy Town began its operations in downtown Lahti in 2023. The LUT collaboration is a key part of Crazy Town’s goal to strengthen its presence in Lahti and enhance its role in promoting business growth.
“This collaboration brings many things together. Our goal at Crazy Town has always been to support companies on the path of innovation and growth. We have also been operating in the intersection of businesses and higher education for years. LUT University has become familiar through LADEC’s excellent projects. The atmosphere has been agile, and the collaboration has gone smoothly, so it’s great to expand this partnership,” says Mikko Korpela from Crazy Town.
More student entrepreneurship and new startups
In addition to the workshops, through the collaboration, LUT offers Crazy Town’s support for the local student entrepreneur community, the Lahti Entrepreneurship Society (LahtiES), in its early stages.
LahtiES is a new organization that brings together students interested in entrepreneurship and aims to strengthen the entrepreneurial mindset and culture in the Lahti region. Crazy Town helps LahtiES organize an innovation event, a hackathon, where students develop solutions for the needs of local startups. In addition, the board of LahtiES will have access to CT’s membership.
More information about the hackathon will be coming later.
MORE INFORMATION:
Mikko Korpela
mikko.korpela@crazytown.fi
+358 10 341 7054
The collaboration is made possible by the ELY-funded project “Utilization of Research Opportunities as a Driver for the Green Transition and Growth of SMEs”
