Product Development Path Maker awards handed out for the first time

Aalto University has established a new award for product development, supported by the Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland (TEK), City of Espoo and Technology Industries of Finland Centennial Foundation. Launched this year, this new award aims to recognize inspiring experiments and activities that have opened up new types of opportunities and impact in product development.

Based on nominations made in August-September 2024, a jury consisting of representatives from Aalto University, Espoo, Technology Industries of Finland Centennial Foundation, TEK and industry selected four winners and three honorary mentions. 

The main award was determined based on a public vote on the four jury-selected winners. This public’s favorite award, the “Ekman Award”, honors Professor Emeritus Kalevi “Eetu” Ekman’s career, passion and commitment to develop education and research in product development and founding the Design Factory concept. This year, the Ekman Award went to the KONE Veturi project, leveraging scenario-based planning to develop a joint vision in a large development consortia.

”All four winners exemplify the importance of collaboration and agile experimentation in product development. We are proud to shine the spotlight on the development practices and people behind these innovations," says the chairperson of the award jury, director of the Aalto University Design Factory Tua Björklund. Aalto University congratulates the winners.

Honorable mentions were given to modular development of a Direct Reduced Iron smelting furnace at Metso, smart utilization of existing resources and infrastructure in a hardware-enabled SaaS platform for energy efficient buildings by Nobody Engineering, and agile, customer-centered development of a propulsion system by Streerprop. 

The winners were announced in conjunction with the DIMECC x Aalto Design Factory Product Development Day in Otaniemi. The awards and the honorable mentions were handed out by the Product Development Path Makers jury, Minister of Science and Culture Sari Multala, President of Aalto University Ilkka Niemelä, and Chairman of the Board of the Technology Industries Centennial Foundation Aaro Cantell. 

Professor of Practice Pekka Pokela from Aalto University points out that the winners and honorary mentions nicely capture not only the award criteria of impactful pioneering of new practices, but represent the wide range of product development efforts. 

“We have small and large companies from different industries, with hardware, software and service products. Effective development requires integrating insights, features and people from different substance areas.”

See more information on all of the winners and honorable mentions here.