We are a Bioeconomy Business Accelerator located in Saarijärvi. Our aim is to accelerate the business development and growth of bioeconomy SME companies. We strive to initiate and commercialize globally significant solutions for mitigation of climate change in international business context and to generate notable bioeconomy and carbon neutral based business growth throughout Finland. The accelerator is run by the Institute of Bioeconomy, JAMK University of Applied Sciences.

Our operating model connects leading companies that offer new openings by presenting development needs with SMEs, as well as start-ups, researchers, and students, that are developing solutions to meet the development needs. We operate in close co-operation with the Bioeconomy Campus and the expert teams of the Institute of Bioeconomy from JAMK University of Applied Sciences.

What do we do?

We strive to offer an internationally and nationally recognized and inspiring meeting point for top businesses, R&D -organizations and innovators working on sustainable bio-based business opportunities. We also promote uptake of innovations and the utilization of new technologies, robotics, and digitalization to create sustainable bio-based business.

BioPaavo co-operates with the greatest accelerator programme in Finland – Growth Open. The aim of the co-operation is to help leading Finnish companies to tackle their sustainability challenges with the help of Hackathons. With the help of the networks of BioPaavo and Growth Open, our Hackathons connects the expertise of different fields to respond to the innovation call or challenge by inviting teams of experts from business and research to develop and offer a solution.

In 2021, our concept has been tested as an online process and it has been successfully applied to several innovation challenges. Our challenge owners from the leading bioeconomy companies have gained workable solutions and SMEs have gained business opportunities.