The true heart of Finland

Tampere Region, the second largest region in Finland with apr. 440 000 inhabitants, is a modern concentration of industry, commerce, services, research and education. The city of Tampere is the largest inland centre in the Nordic countries.

Tampere has been an industrial pioneer in Finland from the very beginning in late 1700s, and still continues as "number one" Finnish industrial city with its strong mechanical engineering and automation cluster. It has shown remarkable capability of transforming from old industrial city into modern ICT and bio technology industries centre. Versatile research and education and cooperation between companies and universities have maintained and further developed the competitiveness of the region's all industry fields, and turn it into the fastest growing area in Finland.

Tampere International Business Office (TIBO) was established in June 2004 and its run by Professia Ltd. The goal of TIBO is to fulfil the vision - "Tampere Region to become one of the world's most attractive operating environments for knowledge intensive businesses and residential environments for experts". The starting point for TIBO's strategy is to support the existing strong clusters (mechanical engineering and automation, ICT, health and biotechnology) by attracting foreign companies which can strengthen these clusters. Besides, TIBO focuses on rousing the existing companies to invest more in the region. The strategy is built on the the needs expressed by the representatives of these key clusters and based on the partnerships with selected foreign regions. At the local level TIBO actively discusses with the business and academia representatives to serve the local needs.

The marketing actions abroad are mainly done in close cooperation with the local companies and research institutions to be able to contact the right companies and find the right expertise. The focused marketing actions demand careful planning and preparation before, and thus the number of these are quite limited per year. The regions, with which TIBO cooperates, are selected on the basis of the expertise and with the help of the Tampere Region EU-office in Brussels, which has been actively searching and contacting the potential regions. Thus, the main emphasis has been on the EU member countries. Russia, St. Petersburg area, and India, Pune area have been of interest for TIBO, too. Emerging areas at the moment include the Baltic Rim region. The selected strategy for TIBO based on the expertise of the region has proven to be successful. During its first year of operation, it has exceeded the set targets.