Application instructions for the TIA Connect networking programme
Tandem Industry Academia Connect (TIA Connect) is a new networking programme by the Finnish Research Impact Foundation that brings together researchers in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) and companies. The aim of the programme is to build mutual understanding between researchers and companies and lay the foundation for future research collaboration.
Who can apply to the TIA Connect programme
The TIA Connect programme is intended for SSH researchers working at Finnish universities and research institutions who are interested in developing research collaboration with companies. SSH includes the humanities, social sciences, business studies, arts research, psychology, law, and educational sciences. Eligible applicants are researchers who are either in the final stage of their doctoral studies (approximately one year before defense) or who have completed their doctorate no more than eight years ago. Applications may also be submitted by individuals in the role of project leader (PI), or jointly by a researcher and a PI.
What happens in the TIA Connect programme
TIA Connect offers researchers a unique opportunity to get to know and network with companies interested in SSH, to gain insights into key business challenges, and to develop research ideas from the perspective of business collaboration. For companies, the programme is a unique chance to get to know researchers and their expertise, and to form new collaborative partnerships.
Two facilitated workshops will be organized for the selected participants, where researchers and companies will get to know one another and discuss opportunities for collaboration. The workshops will be held in Helsinki in November 2025 and February 2026.
If mutual interest arises between a company and a researcher to co-develop a joint project, they may submit an application for the two-year Tandem Industry Academia Postdoc funding. The foundation will support the preparation of the application.
Read more about the foundation’s postdoc funding here.
Company challenge descriptions
Seven Finnish companies are participating in the programme. These companies have a strong interest in SSH and a genuine need to collaborate with researchers in these fields. Each company has submitted a challenge that is central from their perspective and where SSH research can provide critical insight and expertise. The following companies are participating in the programme: F-Secure, Gugguu, Heino Group, Mirka, OP, Porokylän Leipomo, and Valio. You can explore the company challenge descriptions through the links below:
F-Secure – The future role of cybersecurity services
About the company: F-Secure is a Finnish company founded in 1988 that provides cybersecurity solutions for devices such as computers, mobile phones, and tablets.
Operating environment: The cybersecurity landscape is becoming increasingly complex as technological advancements drive the fragmentation of digital services and data.
This fragmentation, coupled with geopolitical tensions and societal polarization, introduces new and evolving risks in digital security. Misinformation and digital manipulation further contribute to an unstable digital environment.
Individuals today face a broad spectrum of digital threats that extend beyond technical breaches to include psychological harm, social engineering, and reputational damage.
These risks are not experienced equally. Cultural background, gender, race, sexuality, and other identity factors may influence both the nature of vulnerabilities and the expectations of protection. Moreover, there is an emerging trend of eroding trust in digital services among individuals.
The challenge: To navigate this evolving landscape, F-Secure seeks to deepen its understanding of how the broader phenomena create new security vulnerabilities and how they influence the needs and expectations of individuals with respect to cyber security services.
A key future challenge is to develop protection strategies that are inclusive, trusted, and aligned with the diverse realities of users’ digital lives. Beyond understanding threats, a central question concerns the evolving experience of trust and safety among individuals, and how service providers can effectively signal these values.
This research challenge can be approached for example from the following perspectives:
- Individual sensemaking of cybersecurity risks and services in everyday digital life
- Unique digital security vulnerabilities and experiences shaped by cultural, gender, racial, sexual, and other identity-related factors
- The evolvement of digital identity across different cultures and demographics
- Cybersecurity threats emerging from growing geopolitical and nation-state tensions
- The conception of trust and safety in the digital environment and the implications for cyber security providers
Gugguu – Building intangible brand capital and growth pathways in Finnish consumer culture
About the company: Gugguu is a Finnish children’s clothing brand founded in 2012.
Operating environment: Building and internationalizing responsible consumer brands requires companies to invest significantly in developing their intangible capital such as brand value, consumer trust, and storytelling.
However, Finnish consumer culture has unique characteristics that may hinder brand growth: while responsibility and domestic origin are emphasized, failure is often not tolerated, and success may provoke skepticism. These cultural factors influence not only operations in the domestic market but also a company’s ability to expand internationally.
The challenge: Gugguu needs to better understand the cultural, social, and psychological factors that affect the development of its intangible brand capital, consumer perceptions, and growth potential.
The company is particularly interested in how responsibility, production origin, and brand storytelling influence consumer choices and how these elements can be leveraged in the brand’s strategic development and growth.
This research challenge can be approached for example from the following perspectives:
- The impact of Finnish consumer culture on brand growth and internationalization
- The role of responsibility and production transparency in consumer decision-making
- Developing intangible capital and recognizing brand value
- The influence of cultural attitudes on tolerance for failure and support for entrepreneurship
Heino Group – Building a culture of innovation in a Finnish family-owned business
About the company: Heino Group is a family-owned entrepreneur, investor, owner, and supporter in the food and beverage sector.
Operating environment: The food industry is undergoing a profound transformation driven by technological advancement, economic and political pressures, and a growing awareness of the environmental and climate impacts of food. Amid these changes, food sector actors are expected to renew themselves, develop sustainable solutions, and increasingly operate as part of a diverse innovation ecosystem.
The challenge: Heino Group seeks to meet these challenges by building a food innovation hub where its subsidiaries and external actors can come together to develop new solutions that address the evolving needs of the sector. The goal is to foster a new culture of collaboration that transcends organizational boundaries and unites strong brand identities under a shared ambition for renewal.
The company’s key challenge is building a cohesive innovation culture: how to establish a shared way of working and sharing knowledge that preserves the distinctive character and brand strength of each subsidiary, while also creating opportunities for creative collisions and experimentation?
The vision is for this culture to extend more broadly across the food innovation ecosystem. The company hopes it will encourage collaboration between large and small players alike, and support the emergence of sustainable solutions within Finnish food culture.
This research challenge can be approached for example from the following perspectives:
- Values and operating models that support a unified innovation culture within the group
- Preconditions for creative collaboration in the food sector ecosystem
- The role of physical space in shaping a generative innovation ecosystem
Mirka – Building and sustaining a responsible business ecosystem
About the company: Mirka is a Finnish family-owned business that develops and manufactures abrasives, grinding machines, and polishing compounds.
Operating environment: Achieving sustainability goals and implementing circular economy solutions require the renewal of global value chains across industries. As a result, new types of business ecosystems are emerging where traditional partnerships evolve and new, often small, actors join the ecosystem.
These ecosystems are built on shared problem-solving and trust. While they can serve as enablers of new business and long-term transformation, without active community-building and support for commercialization, they risk remaining fragmented and fragile. This would hinder the realization of sustainability and circular economy goals.
The challenge: Mirka aims to deepen its understanding of the factors that influence the formation, growth, and longevity of business ecosystems focused on sustainability and the circular economy.
This research challenge can be approached for example from the following perspectives:
- The company’s role in enabling ecosystem growth and transformation
- Building a trust-based community
- Ensuring the resilience and vitality of the ecosystem
- The impact of regulation on the development of responsible innovation ecosystems
OP – Customer insight in an increasingly diverse Finnish society
About the company: OP Financial Group is the largest financial services group in Finland.
Operating environment: Finnish banking has traditionally been associated with stability, long-term customer relationships, and a high level of trust. Customer insight, service design, and communication still often rely on assumptions of shared Finnish values and behavioral norms.
However, demographic change—and above all, increased immigration—challenges these assumptions. In the future, the banking sector must be able to operate in a more culturally diverse environment, where customers’ backgrounds, expectations, and everyday needs vary significantly.
For instance, trust is at the core of banking services, but the ways in which trust is built may differ among customers from various cultural backgrounds. Immigrants also form new customer segments, such as a growing number of entrepreneurs, who may not be adequately served by existing service models.
The challenge: OP needs to understand what demands an increasingly diverse society places on its operations, and how these should be addressed in areas such as customer relationship management, communication, and service development.
This research challenge can be approached for example from the following perspectives:
- How trust is built in banking customer relationships among clients from different cultural backgrounds
- Implicit assumptions about customer expectations in relation to banking services and their impact on customer experience
- Communication strategies in the banking sector within a multilingual and value-diverse society
Porokylä Bakery – The meaning of gluten-free and low-gluten diets in consumer behavior
About the company: Porokylä Bakery (Porokylän Leipomo) is a family-owned bakery business based in Nurmes, founded in 1983.
Operating environment: The popularity of gluten-free and perceived low-gluten diets is growing rapidly, even though only a small share of the population has celiac disease or requires a gluten-free diet for medical reasons.
In Finland, the gluten-free diet has traditionally had a health-related basis, but both internationally and increasingly domestically, dietary choices are influenced by consumption trends, wellness discourse, and the health image associated with food.
Consumers are increasingly making choices that are not strictly gluten-free but rather low-gluten or “gluten-light” products, which are seen as supporting health, well-being, or an individualized lifestyle. This shift challenges both food industry product development and the norms of food culture.
However, the range of meanings and behaviors behind this phenomenon remains poorly understood: What drives people to choose low-gluten products? What values, images, and identities are connected to adopting a gluten-light diet? Can a low-gluten cinnamon bun appeal without a health message, or does success require branding rooted in wellness discourse?
The challenge: Porokylä Bakery seeks to better understand how consumer behavior trends and the meanings associated with them shape business opportunities and brand identities in the food sector especially in the context of gluten-free and low-gluten products.
This research challenge can be approached for example from the following perspectives:
- The cultural and social meanings of a low-gluten diet
- The role of health image and food trends in consumer choices
- Positioning a product perceived as low-gluten as a brand
- Consumer experiences and justifications for eating low-gluten
- The impact of low-gluten trends on product development and company identity in the food sector
Valio – The resilience of primary production in the sustainability transition
About the company: Valio is a Finnish food industry company that primarily processes and markets dairy products.
Operating environment: The future of Finnish food production is undergoing significant transformation. Sustainability requirements, climate change, economic uncertainty, and societal debate are placing increasing pressure on primary producers. At the same time, generational change is slowing, investments are declining, and the number of producers is decreasing at an alarming rate.
This development is particularly evident in dairy farming, where even profitable farms often fail to attract successors. A central question for the continuity of farms is: what factors influence the perception that dairy production is not an attractive career path?
In addition, primary producers often feel their perspectives are overlooked in public discourse. This can undermine trust and the capacity to adapt during the transition to a more sustainable food system.
The challenge: Valio seeks to understand the cultural, social, and structural factors that affect the continuity and resilience of primary production. The company is also interested in how the societal conversation around food system sustainability shapes producers’ experiences and how this dialogue could be made more constructive and inclusive.
This research challenge can be approached for example from the following perspectives:
- Factors behind the lack of generational renewal in primary production
- The economic and psychological pressures on producers and potential solutions
- The role of societal discourse in enabling a constructive transition toward a sustainable food system
How to prepare and submit an application
To apply for the networking programme, submit a maximum two-page idea paper via the Rimbert application system. In the paper, the researcher should describe how they would approach the company’s challenge from a research perspective. It is important to consider what non-financial resources the research would require from the company. The research proposal should be based on collaboration between the researcher and the company. Each applicant may submit one idea paper addressing the challenge of their choice.
The idea paper should give the company an understanding of the researcher’s approach to the described challenge, the researcher’s methods and the potential opportunities for collaboration. The research perspective and approach are freely chosen. The purpose is not to answer all questions in the challenge description, but to present a proposal based on the researcher’s own strengths. The viewpoints in the challenge descriptions are examples, not limitations. Researchers are welcome to suggest alternative, well-justified perspectives that help to understand and solve the underlying phenomena.
While the idea paper is informal in structure, it should address the following:
- What question the research seeks to answer
- What kinds of methods could be used
- What kind of collaboration with the company would be needed (e.g., time, resources)
- What kind of results the approach could yield
Applicants are also asked to attach a CV to the application. If the application is submitted jointly by a researcher and a PI, both CVs should be included.
Apply here: a link to the application system.
For more information about the programme:
Outi Vanharanta
outi.vanharanta@vaikuttavuussaatio.fi
+358 50 596 2597
