Uutisraivaaja innovation contest organized by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation was launched on Wednesday September 19 at the Päivälehti Museum.

The contest seeks ideas for renewing distribution of information and creating sustainable business models for journalism. The contest is now held for the second time.

Researcher Tanja Aitamurto who introduced the contest from the US to Finland, spoke about the goals and the reformed criteria of the competition. The most import changes in the criteria are that requirement for open source has been removed and that a visualization of the idea must be included in the application.

The Uutisraivaaja contest is open to everybody. The dead line for the applications is January 17, 2013. The best ideas for the second phase will be chosen in the spring of 2013. The finalist/one representative of each finalist group will be offered a study trip to Silicon Valley. The winner/s will be announced in the fall of 2013 and given a maximum award of 250,000 euros with which the proposed project can be implemented.

Mikko Koskinen, the CEO of Scoopinion, the winner of the first Uutisraivaaja contest, gave some useful advice to the seminar audience. He encouraged people to work together and to help one another.

He also emphasized the importance of sharing ideas. “Ideas are nothing. You need to share them with other people, test them with other people. Only this way your ideas grow and get better.”

“Your idea isn’t good enough until your children and parents understand it”, said Koponen.

More information: http://uutisraivaaja.fi/home.html