Digital Impact North is an initiative to create one of Europe’s leading regions in IT, artificial intelligence and digitalization, known for delivering and attracting through cross-border collaboration.
The initiative was taken by Umeå University and its IT departments, together with Region Västerbotten, Umeå Municipality, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Umeå Science Park to establish the region as an international strong area for development together with companies, municipalities and research institutes in northern Sweden.
It is a region that, at the highest international level, creates knowledge, innovations, technology solutions and growth companies and which attracts talents, companies, and investors in a tough global competitive setting.
It is a region steeped in an internationally competitive IT sector, an innovative and expanding business, a strong research, leading education and a growing number of actors, determined to make a difference in a world under an accelerating and digitally influenced pressure of change.
Vision
The vision of Digital Impact North is to create one of the leading regions in the world in terms of strategic digitalization and a smart, sustainable society. A society that is a pioneer in primary industry, health, community planning and an international leader in a number of IT-related knowledge and technology areas.
Mission
The mission of Digital Impact North is to create the best possible conditions for all the organizations in the region that want to be renewed through digitalization, enhanced by intelligent digital solutions and for all the regional IT sector companies and researchers who want to create innovations, knowledge and training in digital solutions for international leadership level.
Accelerate and strengthen
The approach to establishing the region as a European leader in strategic digitalization and the smart, sustainable society is based on a number of sub-strategies. Among other things, that:
- Accelerate the region’s innovation and innovation pace through joint innovation and project strategies.
- Raise the region’s knowledge and competence levels in IT and artificial intelligence through broad investments in research, education, external analysis, foresight processes, dissemination of knowledge, etc.
- Strengthen the region’s attractiveness and renewing power through common communication and networking strategies.
Based on collaboration
Through regional collaboration across knowledge, technology, organizational, sector and location boundaries, Digital Impact North will:
- Contribute to a shared brand, value-based and cultural building, with a strengthened global attractiveness and identity of the region’s individuals and players.
- Make it easy and attractive for regional players to join, and be part of the initiative themselves, whether they come from business, academia or society.
- Make it easy for all actors to add new knowledge-driven resources such as events, meeting places, external analyzes, research results and education, thereby contributing to rising knowledge and competence levels in the region.
- Make it easy to also develop and add innovation-driven resources such as project offices, business development units, lab and experimental environments, test beds, seminar structures, etc., thereby contributing to the region’s innovation pace and project intensity across the area’s knowledge and sector boundaries.
Regional development and collaboration
Digital Impact North will contribute to regional development and the smart, sustainable society based on a strong collaboration between a growing and increasingly competitive IT sector, an IT research that is a leader in more and more areas of knowledge, an IT education that can deliver the skills required , and a growing number of organizations considered pioneering in their respective sectors. The initiative will be successful because most puzzle pieces are already in place and a long-term plan for how the process should be pushed forward.
Internationally renowned
By 2030, the region will be internationally renowned for its ways of creating collaboration and its ability to constantly deliver new important solutions, insights and approaches that contribute to the renewal and sustainability of entire industries and community ecosystems.
Dealing with societal challenges
When talented individuals, research groups, companies, investors, community representatives and other actors come together in close proximity, new knowledge, technology and sectoral opportunities are also created, which can address and manage major societal challenges within, for example, Agenda 2030.
Strengthening the regional ability to meet societal challenges is a stated ambition for the Digital Impact North!