Lotta Partanen

I am an innovation professional with 15 years of experience in business renewal in large international corporations. My passion it to drive change for the better through my professional work. Currently, I am most honored to be building the science based incubator TT LaunchPad and other incubation and acceleration activities at VTT Research, to enable the renewal of industries through the creation of new business.
In my work, I apply insight and foresight to join design, science and business for driving strategic new business opportunity definition and development. I advocate a lean design process that is made experiential and measurable from the early stages. Experiential makes the concept graspable and communicates the value and dependencies, while measurable quantifies learning on how to improve on the next iteration. At the core of my way of working is co-creation, because it enables learning and crystalizing new knowledge effectively and nurturing the stakeholders’ sense of ownership and commitment towards the project.

My passion is to be the initiator, scoping, defining and planning the approach. One of my core strengths is my ability to network and interact with a broad range of professionals in pursuit of an ambitious goal. Currently, my mind is busy with the question: How do you develop high-performance and fundable, deep tech startup teams?

Professional path
Philips Design introduced me to strategic, insights driven innovation design and service design in new ventures and future opportunity creation. At Nokia, I ran business design projects for high-end devices, and I created competitive intelligence analysis and future scenarios in Nokia Corporate Strategy. My internal clients ranged from the Board of Directors to individual product concept definition teams. I continued in this role at Microsoft in the Devices Group. At Fortum, I participated in various strategy projects, lead the formation of the long term consumer vision, and supported the Innovation Accelerator projects with customer-centeredness.
In my current position at VTT Finland, I develop and run the deep tech spin-off incubator, where our purpose is to develop research-based teams into fundable startups with impact