In this 2019 presentation, Mikko Rusama traces Helsinki’s evolution from a 19th‑century city plagued by cholera to a modern innovation hub anchored by the historic Maria hospital, now transformed into the Maria 01 startup campus and slated for further expansion. He frames the city as a long‑standing platform that supplies infrastructure, governance, and a marketplace for residents and businesses, and argues that Helsinki can extend this role into the digital platform economy by leveraging open data, APIs, and partnerships (e.g., with Tencent’s WeChat mini‑program). Rusama then turns to blockchain, citing Gartner research that most blockchain projects are unnecessarily centralized and that many are hype‑driven. He proposes a pragmatic set of five questions to decide when blockchain is appropriate for public‑sector services, emphasizing trust, distributed ledgers, and smart‑contract automation. He highlights forecasts that blockchain‑based services could reach billions of users and generate trillions in value, and points to Estonia’s government use of blockchain as a concrete example. Throughout, he asks whether cities can become digital platforms comparable to app stores or social networks, what boundary resources (APIs, certification, processes) are required, and how to balance ownership versus third‑party provision of services. The talk ends with a call for pilots that test blockchain’s potential to improve city services, reduce costs, increase trust, and spur economic growth.
Chapters
TranscriptAuto-generated · 16 min
Good afternoon. 170 years ago, Helsinki was quite a different place than today. We were part of the Russian Empire, and Helsinki had only 20,000 citizens. And Helsinki had a severe problem. We had cholera. epidemic infection in the city, and Helsinki was forced to build its first hospital. And 1870s, Helsinki started to grow thanks to Industrial Revolution and railway track from Saint Petersburg to Helsinki. Actually, you can see part of the railway In this picture, and as the city grew, there was a need for a bigger hospital. And this hospital in the picture, Maria, was built 1909, and it operated until the very recent years. This hospital is still in use, but today it is one of the biggest. startup hubs in the Nordics. It is home to 130 operators employing close to 1,000 people. And with the success of this Maria 01 startup hub, there has been made a recent decision that we will build a new building next to this one, and by 2021, I think the first extension should be ready, making it the one of the biggest startup hubs in Europe. So big transformation here for the old hospital building. My— if you think about blockchain, blockchain is a disruptive technology that is shaking the position of established middlemen. So my question is that to you is that Is blockchain maybe considered a threat like a cholera epidemic in Helsinki 1850s? So this is a question. But if you think about the role of the city, you know, in a way, in a traditional way, cities are platforms. That provide infrastructure, government governance, and safe environment to both residents and companies. And marketplace that I see from my office window is a good example of a platform that is combining buyers and producers. It would be quite inconvenient if every buyer should go to find the kind of producer from different location. So, and I argue that From the very founding date, since 1550, Helsinki has been this kind of platform for its residents and businesses. And we have been a successful platform because Helsinki has been growing rapidly. I think last year we got 8,000 new residents, and of course that is attracting new business to the city. Helsinki is also an open innovation platform. As said, we provide infrastructure like Maria Startup Hub, but we also provide funding, information, and connections through number of different organizations and vehicles. And these help startups, investors, and academy, and customers to to make kind of good business and find new collaboration opportunities. Now going back to the theme of this event, when I was invited to this event, I thought that, hey, well, I don't know enough about blockchain. But then I thought that maybe this is a good opportunity and the forces me to really dig into this topic of blockchain. And I attended Gartner IT Expo in Barcelona 2 weeks ago, and I heard one keynote that, that in which the speaker said that blockchain is a solution to a problem that nobody has. I think this was a bit of a joke, but according to Gartner, 90% of the so-called blockchain projects are actually based on centralized design that actually do not necessarily need blockchain technology to operate, and it could be even cheaper to implement these projects without blockchain. Other finding was that actually there are very few companies As Mikko Järvielte in the previous kind of talk said that that actually are working on blockchain. So I started to think that is there is this bit similar situation as we had in the beginning of internet at the times of ARPANET? At the time, very few people actually realized what we are. what this is really all about. And here's actually kind of a short video clip that I find kind of interesting from 1994. This is NBC Today Show.
Back now at 56 pass. I wasn't— Can you hear me? Translate that as I was doing that little tease. Oh, that's right. That little mark with the—
Can you put the volume a bit louder?
Laita pelaa vaan. Laita sivua.
Back now at 56 Pass. I wasn't prepared to translate that as I was doing that little tease. That little mark with the A and then the ring around it.
At.
See, that's what I said. Katie said she thought it was about.
Yeah.
Oh.
But I'd never heard it. Around. I'd never heard it said. I'd always seen the mark but never heard it said. And then it sounded stupid when I said it. Violence at NBC.
He hired her to pick fights in the lunchroom the other week.
There it is, violence@nbcge.com. I mean—
Well, Alison should know.
What is the internet anyway?
Internet is, uh, that
massive
computer network. Right. The one that's becoming really big now.
What do you mean that's big? How does one— what do you write to it like mail?
No, a lot of people use it and communicate. I guess they can communicate with NBC writers and producers. Alison? Can you explain what internet is?
No, she can't say anything in 10 seconds or less.
Allison will be in the studio shortly.
What does it mean?
It's a giant computer network made up of— started from—
Oh, I thought you were going to tell us what this was.
It's a computer billboard.
It's not a net. It's a computer billboard, but it's nationwide. It's several universities and everything all joined together. Right.
And others can access it.
Right. And it's getting bigger and bigger all the time.
It came in really handy during the quake. A lot of people, that's how they were communicating out to tell family and loved ones they were okay because all the phone lines were down.
I was telling Katie, you know—
But you don't need that. You don't need a phone line to operate the internet?
No.
Sorry about the bad sound quality, but I think this short clip something tells about the confusion. Like, is it some kind of messaging platform or— way to make calls or whatever, what is this@ sign? And I sense that there is a bit similar confusion now around blockchain. In the same Gartner IT Expo, there were a couple of predictions made about blockchain, and this is kind of interesting. In 4 years' time, Gartner estimates that there are 1 billion people that are using some blockchain-based technologies without actually understanding that there is blockchain technologies behind the system. So my kind of conclusion is that if the amount of users using blockchain-based technologies will grow, I think also the business potential will grow. And actually Gartner estimates that the blockchain-based business will be worth $10 billion by 2022, and, and they generate significant business benefits and value up to $3.1 trillion. I don't even understand how big that amount is, but clearly some see huge potential in blockchain. So, and the challenge clearly is how can we identify the right business and use cases and really start piloting those? Also thinking coming from the public sector now, I mean, there are predictions that at least 5% of government entities will use blockchain as a transparent authoritative ledger for some official records. I think our neighboring country Estonia is a good example of of kind of government that is utilizing blockchain. Going back to the platform, platform thinking, this is a recent TechCrunch article that told that App Store has now 5 million users on a weekly basis. But what, but what is more significant is that App Store has 20 million producers. My question is that could cities— Helsinki together with allied cities— host this big platform providing services to residents, companies, and organizations? Or is this a completely crazy idea? The question is that could cities create a digital platform that doesn't have the limitations of the physical marketplace that enable direct interaction between different parties and remove the friction from, from the transaction, actually cut out the middleman? And how can we trigger the positive network effect? The point is that if the kind of— if you think about Facebook, Facebook is more valuable if more of your friends are using that. But as the amount of users in Facebook grows, it's also more attractive to advertisers. So this positive network effect has really benefited Facebook and Google type of companies. And what are the necessary boundary resources that enable these platforms to scale? So the question is that how can cities, Helsinki, or Helsinki together with its partners, build this kind of platform and enter into platform economy? Is it possible? And what would be the role of Helsinki in this kind of platform? We are already having a lot of open data that we have opened, and we have opened many APIs. So in this way, we are owning this— we are owners for this kind of services. We are also producers to the existing platforms. We are cooperating with Tencent, Have we have a mini program in WeChat targeted for Chinese tourists coming to Helsinki, or are we doing something in between? So I think my argument is probably we our role can be both producing and owning depending on the use case. And what kind of platform we would like to be? There are marketplaces like Amazon or freelancing services matching. Professionals and people at need of their services, or asset sharing complementing platforms like app stores and Android Store. So you build on something, something existing operating systems and provide value-added services for, for users. Or we can be sharing information. So this is the big This is a big paradigm change. Rather than providing services ourselves, we give control to the third parties, and there are many questions arising from this scenario. Are we— this, this easily becomes also a very ideological question. Is it okay to have third parties to provide the service? And this decision was even difficult for For Steve Jobs, it took 1 year to convince Steve Jobs on opening up the App Store. I think he was very scared of losing control on the user experience. I think the starting point is to think about this platform economy is that what cities can offer. So in addition to these so-called core services— healthcare, education, infrastructure, culture, and sports events— we can complement and add value to these services by having the kind of digital services on top of this. We can provide information marketplaces. We are the innovation platform, and we can provide matchmaking and asset sharing services. And in technical terms, we need certain components like APIs, right processes to work with ecosystem partners, we need probably some review and certification methods. And this is a good question. If you think about, uh, blockchain, maybe blockchain enables that there is no need, uh, such, such middle— middleman anymore. And smart contracts is also an interesting example. If, if you want to execute some kind of contract every time some API is accessed, whether checking the rights to use data or executing some monetary transaction. This is an interesting question. So there are certain criteria when you can consider whether blockchain is a good solution. These 5 questions may be relevant if you consider, is blockchain the right technology kind of tool or technology? Is there need for a distributed database for transaction information? Is there by default mistrust between stakeholders? Is there— there is no necessarily trusted third party. Is there a clear logic for the transactions? And is there a need to have trust in the transactions? So my question to you is that, is blockchain a solution to a problem we have not yet recognized. I encourage you to think about this with us using the kind of platforms we are providing. And we are definitely interested in blockchain if we can provide better services for our residents, for our companies in Helsinki, make better— be more productive, provide services cheaper, increase trust by providing safer services, and, and if we are able to create new economic growth thanks to blockchain. We believe that Helsinki is a big enough city to develop these services, but also kind of small enough to kind of make it easy and practical. So thank you.
