The University of Eastern Finland’s podcast series opens the curtains on research and innovation activities. The theme of the second episode is cross-boundary collaboration and the opportunities it creates.
The Innovation Pathways Podcast dives into the heart of research, innovation, and societal impact. The podcast highlights researchers’ diverse career paths, the potential of entrepreneurship and collaboration with industry, as well as persistent myths related to innovation.
In the second episode, the discussion focuses on different forms of collaboration: why it’s worth building partnerships across boundaries, how to find partners outside the academic world, and what tangible results collaboration can bring back to the university.
Joining the discussion are Professor Jyrki Saarinen, Head of the Department of Physics and Mathematics and the Institute of Photonics at the University of Eastern Finland, and Professor Juho Pesonen, Professor of Tourism Business and Director of the International Master’s Programme in Tourism Marketing and Management. The episode is hosted by AI Business Leader Patrick Halford from the university’s broad stakeholder network. The conversation is held in English.
The episodes will be released throughout the winter and spring 2026. The series is available on the university’s Soundcloud channel as well as on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts.
Intro: Welcome to the University of Eastern Finland's Innovation Pathways podcast, where science meets real-world impact.
Patrick Halford: Welcome to the University of Eastern Finland's Innovation Pathways podcast. This is where science meets real-world impact. And in this series, we explore how ideas born in our labs evolve into innovations, collaborations, and often into companies. Today, in our second episode, we are asking and answering more big questions. Why build collaboration across borders? How to find it beyond academia? And what does it bring back to the university in terms of real-world results? Now, to answer these key questions, we are joined by two University of Eastern Finland professors, board members, and seasoned innovators. First of all, Professor Jyrki Saarinen. He is Professor of Photonics Applications and Commercialisation at University of Eastern Finland. And he is also a portfolio entrepreneur, a board member, and a mentor. And also, we have professor Juho Pesonen. And he is Professor of Tourism Business at the University of Eastern Finland, and also an advisor to business and a board member. My name is Patrick Halford, and I have the pleasure of facilitating this important discussion, so let's jump in. Now, the first question I will bring to Jyrki Saarinen. So, University of Eastern Finland has a very wide range of faculties and research, and that opens up a lot of opportunity for collaboration with business across the world. So, I want to start by asking some examples from you of some of the international collaborations that you have been involved in driving for the university with business.
Jyrki Saarinen: We are one of the most international departments, even in Finland. More than half of our employees are foreigners. And that automatically brings a lot of connections. Because all of them, they are coming from all over the world, even the students, postdocs, doctoral students, so they have their own connections. But then, of course, the collaboration with the EU, and also US and Asia, is very important. And I have been doing everything to bring that. So, one thing is to go to different places, conferences and so on, and give back ideas to the professors who actually then have to build the collaboration.
Patrick Halford: And I believe you have just come back from Japan and California.
Jyrki Saarinen: Yes.
Patrick Halford: Can you share any of the things that you were doing there?
Jyrki Saarinen: In Japan, I had a pleasure to be the guest for the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. And there were more than 20 countries represented. So, a lot of connections again. And then, I was in the US. I was in the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is a great place to see how you can apply photonics, because that's part of my professorship. And then, I was in the LA region where the Consulate of Finland organised a lot of meetings with the companies and universities in the LA region. And then, I was in the Photonics West, which is the most important conference and event in photonics in the world.
Patrick Halford: Thank you, we will dig more into that in a minute. So, Juho, can you tell us a little bit about some of your international activities and what you are driving with University of Eastern Finland?
Juho Pesonen: Yes, especially regarding my own position as Professor of Tourism Businesses, we are working with a lot of tourism small- and medium-sized enterprises. So, they are a completely different kind of companies than what we typically consider as innovative, but something that we find extremely meaningful to work with, because they are forming a backbone of the tourism industry. And they are employing a lot of people. About 95% to 99% of all the businesses in our field are small- and medium-sized enterprises. And we do enjoy working with them and have worked with them in different kinds of EU projects, for example, across the European Union. Especially in the rural regions, countryside, where these kinds of innovations and new ways of doing business are desperately needed, if we consider that we also want to keep these regions sustained and provide livelihoods for many people. And we are seeing that tourism is one of these businesses that really makes that possible, because otherwise the businesses have very few reasons to really stay in the rural areas.
Patrick Halford: And it's very much a circular economy. I don't mean in the traditional description, but tourism businesses feed other businesses, which also feeds back into new innovations and the university. So, it's circulating around.
Juho Pesonen: Absolutely. And tourism is meaningful, especially because of its significant impact across the industries, as you said. When tourists come to a destination, they go to retail stores, they go to restaurants, hotels, do a lot of activities, visit attractions, museums, all of these things. And they are having bigger impact than just the impact of tourism. Not to mention all of these cross-cultural impacts and how we learn more about the world through tourism, which is also quite an important part of the business.
Patrick Halford: Yes. Jyrki, if I can come back to you. You were talking about all of these different places you are engaging with and visiting. How do you stay on top of the speed of what is going on, and how does the team stay on top of the opportunities?
Jyrki Saarinen: You have to keep on meeting people all over again and so on. And you cannot just trust that you have met once a person, and then you don't need to meet them again. And also, for Asia, building the personal relationship is highly important. You cannot do business in Japan unless you first have established the personal contacts.
Patrick Halford: Yes. And is that the same in the activities you engage in, especially in the EU with these projects, Juho?
Juho Pesonen: Absolutely so. How I see it is that we as researchers, of course, read a lot of articles and a lot of books and whatever is happening on media in our field and build this intellectual capital, but I consider social capital as important as intellectual capital, especially if we want to take our ideas forward. Of course, I come from the business school, so I know our field is highly practice-oriented in a way, and we train people for certain business positions to great extent. Our field might be different than many other fields, but I have noticed that the social capital, who you know, who you trust, who knows you, is really, really important when you are driving collaboration and figuring out what you can do with the research that you are doing. And also, I find these social connections extremely important for inspiring research. So, when I know the businesses, what they are doing, what they are struggling and working with, I am seeing what the important topics are, how I can develop research that would be contributing to the innovations and these issues that companies have. And I feel that keeping up to date with the business field is extremely important for research as well.
Patrick Halford: Yes. And we have talked about international collaborations, but what about national inside Finland? I mean, you are collaborating with different ecosystems, universities, governments, policies, and things like that. Jyrki.
Jyrki Saarinen: Yes, that's something that we have forgot about in the past. So, when universities wanted to collaborate, you started looking for collaborators outside Finland. But for example, we have the flagship programme where the national collaboration is highly important and promoted. And there, it has been very fruitful because now, we can learn a lot from our other universities. We are not just competitors. We can actually collaborate and speed up many, many things. So, this is highly important, and it's good that it has been on a different pace now than in the past.
Patrick Halford: Thank you. And Juho, nationally?
Juho Pesonen: Absolutely. Well, tourism field is small. The business field is a little bit bigger in Finland, but not too wide. But I find especially the national collaboration with businesses and different tourism organisations extremely important. And our tourism business research group is actually the only business-focused tourism group in Finland. So, we have a very unique position. And with that position, and being based in Eastern Finland, we have wide networks and good connections with the local destinations, for example, and destination development organisations that are interested in developing Eastern Finland and Lakeland Finland as tourism destinations. And our business school and our group are playing quite a big role in this development, that we are able to expand internationally, especially here in Eastern Finland.
Patrick Halford: Very good. Thank you. Moving on to the next key theme that I would like to discuss here. Now, there's no single way to build partnerships. I have been involved in building a lot of these European corporate research partnerships. And there's very different approaches depending on who you are and who you want to work with. Now, Juho, how do you start developing a new partnership? I mean, how do you actually get things rolling?
Juho Pesonen: There are two different approaches. One is this dream team approach, that you identify that you have certain goals, who would be the organisations that you would absolutely need, who would be at the very top of the game if you want to build something around this theme. And then, it's very much about developing an idea that you can sell to these new partnerships. That is something that is resonating with them, that's important for them. And I am finding success in cold calling companies. You would be my dream partner in this project. Would you like to join in? But the other way is, of course, building connections and networks, and then utilising your existing networks, the people you know, the people you trust, and especially people in organisations that you know that are doing cool stuff and that are on the level that you want to work with. And I am visiting conferences, events and all kinds of opportunities, doing keynotes and so on, just to meet these people and network with them. And I find this approach of building the social capital really important. You never know who you are going to be working with in the future. Just keep your eyes open, build your networks in a systematic way, introduce yourself to people, be interested in what they are doing. I find this people-to-people connection really important, that you have these personal connections and people that you can trust.
Patrick Halford: Jyrki, do you find that a lot of new connections actually come to you, and they approach yourself and your organisation through your conferences? How do you develop new partnerships?
Jyrki Saarinen: So, one thing is, definitely, that people are aware of you. And the only thing is that you just wish it, you are proactive. So, for example, I am going to Australia, I am going to fly via Singapore, I will stop there, I contact the leading university there and say that I just want to come there. And you never know what kinds of connections you get there. So, that's the way. You have to make people aware of what you are doing. But then, of course, once you know and you have some ideas, you can check your own contacts, you can contact them to ask whether they know some people. And then, of course, you have to make a cold call and tell. And usually, you have to be the one to go. You cannot just ask people to come to meet you, but you have to go first there. And in that way, you can start building the relationship.
Patrick Halford: Before this conversation, we were just talking outside about AI and how we are using AI for various things in our business. Now, do you find that the AI that you are using helps to prepare yourself for the meetings? Does it help to accelerate the development of new partnerships? I will actually ask you, Juho, first.
Juho Pesonen: For me, I have tried to keep AI out of human connections, and really, I personally hate when you get an email written by AI. If a person hasn't shown that much effort to write an email themselves, how important can this be? So, I haven't really used AI for that purpose. I am really more traditional in that way, maybe.
Patrick Halford: But researching the company and the organisation.
Juho Pesonen: Yes, finding the right people, and especially if you don't know who would be the top people, who would be the members of this dream team, that's, of course, what you can do. But I feel like I have done pretty well with Google as well. So, AI hasn't really transformed that aspect that much, maybe saving some time, but not that big of a transformative effect.
Patrick Halford: And Jyrki, with AI, there's obviously AI on the scientific discovery and development side, but then there's also how you can use it to collaborate better and to accelerate projects better. How are you using it?
Jyrki Saarinen: In the same way as Juho said, finding out about who could be the right contact or what kinds of activities there are in a certain university or company. But then, of course, what I try to do is also, before I go to meet people, I try to find out as much as possible about the background of the company or the university or the researcher, what he or she has been doing and so on. And in that way, I can be more aware not to start asking who you are. Because I know the person or the company beforehand.
Patrick Halford: Yes. Okay. Thank you very much for that. And I was going to say, actually, these new translation capabilities as well that we are getting from AI, that really helps, I guess, with getting our ideas over with different nationalities and people who are maybe not so good at conversing complex scientific things in English. Have you started using any of these real-time AI translation activities?
Jyrki Saarinen: Not yet, but I am aware of that, and I definitely want to start doing that.
Juho Pesonen: I think that's very cool. I was in a conference in Spain, and the conference was in Spanish, but I could follow really well all of the keynotes and all of the presentations with AI translating real-time what they were talking about, and then were able to discuss these topics with the participants. It was really, really good, because my Spanish is really, really rusty. So, I am thinking there are possibilities, because not all people in the world speak English. And I think we have one big English community, but there's so much science, and there's so much stuff happening, especially in tourism business fields outside in different regions where the English might not be the main language. I feel that there is a lot of potential there, but the question is, can we really realise, and how can we realise that potential, and who is doing that is another thing, because this English community is also quite big and global already.
Patrick Halford: Absolutely. I would like to move on to the next theme actually, and I'm going to start with Jyrki. When you get these new partnerships and these new collaborations, how do you then bring that back into the university, and how do you communicate the opportunity inside the University of Eastern Finland?
Jyrki Saarinen: So, one thing is, of course, because I am trying to meet as many people even within the same day, I have to start making notes. So, I make either voice notes or writing notes after each meeting. And then, after that, when I am back at the university, then, of course, I will contact those persons who might benefit from those contacts. So, definitely to feed that this is the person I can also introduce if you want, because I met the person and so on. So, that's very important that it doesn't stay in your mind and your brain, but really you spread the word.
Patrick Halford: So, then you connect the university.
Jyrki Saarinen: I connect. So, I have a weird way in my mind. Every time I meet a person and start talking, I start thinking about who might be the right person to contact. So, in a way, it's automatic what happens in my brain.
Patrick Halford: And you are spread across these two campuses, main campuses in between Joensuu and Kuopio. Is your team mainly focused in Joensuu, or do you also have teams here in Kuopio?
Jyrki Saarinen: My whole team is in Joensuu, but of course, we collaborate a lot. So, for example, we had more than 20 scientists this week visiting here, trying to make also the connections.
Patrick Halford: Excellent. Thanks. And Juho, how do you scale what you learn out there in the market? How do you scale that and leverage it inside the university?
Juho Pesonen: Well, for me, I have been investing quite a lot of time in building my LinkedIn profile and LinkedIn platform. And that's my go-to tool of connecting with people. And also, all of these discussions that I am seeing with my contacts that they are posting, then I might be able to tag somebody I know from our university, from our team, from our business school who might be interested in this and might know how to approach this issue or problem. So, I am trying to build contacts mainly through the LinkedIn platform. But also, of course, if there are some immediate, direct connections that I know, this person is looking at circular economy, and we have this person, Anna Lehtimäki, for example, in our business school looking at circular economy, maybe they should be meeting up or discussing. But I am also thinking that, well, it might not be at that very moment or immediately afterwards, but you might have a need that comes sometimes, a year or two years after this, and then you remember, there's that one person who was doing this. And that's when you are able to leverage these social capitals and networks that you are building.
Patrick Halford: Very good. And now over to Jyrki. What is your feeling about 2026? What are the top three things that you see coming and have really got your attention in terms of the university and business collaboration?
Jyrki Saarinen: Well, one thing is, of course, that there is more and more push from the university side also on the innovations. So, that's good. And we are also looking forward to the Ministry of Education also putting that on the KPIs, because that's something that is missing. We don't get paid at the university for this kind of work. But they have said that they were trying to find ways to measure that and give back. So, that's one thing, definitely. And then, I would say that we are learning more and more from abroad, that the innovation is more and more important, and we are getting more money now from the government to take RDI and so on. So, these are also very, very important things, which accelerate and help us.
Patrick Halford: Yes, thank you. And Juho, what's big on your radar for 2026?
Juho Pesonen: Well, we are looking especially on Business Finland projects at this moment. I think there are big opportunities opening up there with innovations. And also, looking at innovations from a wider perspective, that it's not just start-ups and new businesses, but also social innovations, policy innovations, marketing innovations as well. And I feel like these are the things that should be brought forward even stronger in our university. It would be really nice to get also a boost into this start-up ecosystem. And I think we are moving into the right direction. Of course, one of the things that Finland is not doing economically that well, and typically, those are the best times when start-ups really start to thrive, and I'm looking forward that maybe start-ups could be again this growth boost for the Finnish economy, and I think that there's a lot of potential there in the community, and we have to also help and support these ideas and scale them globally.
Patrick Halford: And as you said earlier, the SMEs as well. SMEs, of course, it's quite a big range from smaller SMEs to larger ones, but there's a lot of potential opportunity for them.
Juho Pesonen: Absolutely, especially the larger small companies, or smaller medium-sized companies that are on the growth trajectory. I think this is something that Finland might be missing quite a lot. We have a lot of small businesses and micro-sized businesses and then larger businesses. But if we would be able to grow these medium-sized businesses and their employment effort, that would be great. And those are always great partners to work with, because they are in a way agile, but at the same time, they also have resources to do stuff. And I am really enjoying the collaboration especially with these kinds of companies that are growing and innovating and have resources for partnerships.
Patrick Halford: Now both you, Jyrki, and you, Juho, you bridge between academia, university, and business as well. And there's this common myth that says that these two worlds don't communicate. But obviously, you prove that it's very possible to generate a lot of new business value and innovation between the university academia space and both big business, but also accelerating new business. What do you think about that?
Jyrki Saarinen: Of course, they are in a different phase of the commercialisation. So, we are in the early phase at the university, and then the companies are supposed to be in the late phase and executing those. But yes, we still speak the same language, and we can bridge. I would say that the most important thing is really about bridging so that we understand what the companies need, what is the business and so on, and on the other hand, we make our science understandable to the companies, so that they know what we are doing, so that we are not completely separated.
Patrick Halford: And Juho?
Juho Pesonen: I think also building this university culture that supports this bridging between university and industry is really important. Because I have invested quite a lot of time in building these connections and developing my research and understanding what businesses care about, what they are doing, what are their issues. If I had spent all of that time writing articles, my academic profile would be completely different. But I have found it always interesting that I have been able to do things my way in the university. And it might not be the same for everybody. Somebody might be more interested in doing that research part. But I think it's always great to have people also who are interested not just in the academia part, but also how that connects with the industry. And also, that we have industry people who are interested in what's going on with the academia. And those are always the best connections when somebody comes from the industry. Hey, I have this kind of issue, or maybe we could work together on this, and they acknowledge that we are doing really great research in universities.
Patrick Halford: So, what I have been hearing from these great insights from both of you is that Finnish and international businesses really flourish as a result of this steady flow of ideas and expertise coming out of the University of Eastern Finland, and then bringing also global and national capabilities into the university as well. Very good. Thank you both very much for this inspiring discussion. Thank you, Jyrki, and thank you, Juho, for joining this second episode in this podcast series with your international business and academic perspectives. Your combined expertise in both leading research and driving companies is an inspiration to everyone. So, I would like to just wrap up and say stay tuned for the next episode number three in this University of Eastern Finland podcast series. Thank you.
Juho Pesonen: Thank you.
Jyrki Saarinen: Thank you.
