Evaluation of Business Finland’s programmes promoting digitalisation

Over the past 15 years, Business Finland (formerly Tekes and Finpro) has supported the digitalisation of Finnish companies’ businesses and helped them to create a global competitive advantage. During the winter of 2020–2021, MDI, together with Owal Group, Melkior and Resolute HQ, evaluated 13 programmes that have promoted the digitalisation of Business Finland. The purpose of this work was to produce a comprehensive assessment of the success, results and impacts of the implementation of these programmes, as well as the wider social ‘added value’ in terms of digitalisation development in Finland. Particular attention was to examining how the programmes are implemented. The key questions here were: have the programmes been an effective facilitator in promoting digitalisation, has the simultaneous launch of several programmes and their co-operation brought the expected synergies and ‘added value’, whether the compilation of separate programmes into one large programme entity has been a successful way of operating and what kind of ‘added value’ the large-scale programmatic investment has brought to the promotion of digitalisation in Finland. Central to the evaluation were company-level statistical analyses using econometric methods. The work produced development recommendations on how Business Finland’s programme instrument should be developed in the future and how Business Finland should promote the future digitisation of companies in Finland.