About us

As the United Nations transforms its skills and culture to meet the challenges of the 21st century, UN Global Pulse Finland serves as a center of excellence, supporting change that can positively impact the world. 

The team is anchored in the Secretary-General’s “Our Common Agenda” and its vision for the future of multilateralism. It stands at the forefront of this transformative journey and embodies the principles and aspirations of a UN 2.0. 

As the Capabilities Hub of the UN Global Pulse Network, it leads in building new capabilities and skills, specifically on strategic foresight and scaling innovation. The team plays a crucial role in creating new capabilities across the UN system, actively engaging in experimentation-based learning and providing technical support to foster a culture of innovation in the UN family.  Additionally, the team assists UN colleagues in integrating new approaches and methods into their work through projects and programmes such as the Innovation Scale Accelerator.

The office also hosts global teams in areas such as monitoring, learning and evaluation, creative communications and design, and partnerships that also support our offices in Jakarta, Kampala and New York. In this sense, UN Global Pulse Finland serves as the foundation for both regional and global project portfolios, with a focus on driving learning, adoption and replication of innovation within the UN family and alongside its partners.  

The Finland team also disseminates research, tools and insights on frontier topics, such as innovative partnerships, the role of creative practice in transformation, intergenerational equity and how to scale innovation in the UN system. 

The team is based in Helsinki, Finland, with other colleagues located across the European region.

Our history

UN Global Pulse Finland joined the Global Pulse Network in 2020, becoming its fourth office and first hub in Europe. 

Global Pulse Finland was seeded from previous UN innovation initiatives within Finland, including the Finland Lab of the United Nations Technology Innovation Labs (UNTIL), which was absorbed by Global Pulse in 2020. 

The team was established to complement existing innovation efforts across Global Pulse and expand its work in innovation scaling, creative communications, operations and strategic foresight. 

In 2020, the team launched a two year experiment that explored the value of strategic foresight and the role it can play in transforming the UN system. The team also supported the incubation of the UN Futures Lab, an initiative born from the Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda, that empowers the UN and beyond to use futures thinking and strategic foresight in planning, policy- and decision-making. 

Global Pulse Finland has since evolved to serve a global role within the UN Global Pulse Network, leading its work to support new capabilities and approaches for UN teams as well as accelerating innovation across the UN system.

The team has benefited from Finland’s long-standing innovation and design ecosystem, collaborating previously with Aalto University, Turku University, SITRA, Futures Platform, and most recently Demos Helsinki, among others.

Projects

Discover current and previous projects from UN Global Pulse’s Finland team.

Our resources and publications

Explore recent publications, resources, and materials from the team.

Latest from the team

Explore recent stories, blogs and insights from the team.

Connect with us

Want to learn more about the work of UN Global Pulse Finland or how to collaborate?
Feel free to contact us at info@unglobalpulse.org.

UN Global Pulse Finland is generously funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. We are grateful for their continued support of this work and transformative innovation across the UN System.