Ideas for making everyday life easier are sought in YIT’s Hack the Living competition

The construction industry is undergoing a change, which will show in housing construction developing towards housing business.

YIT has launched the Hack the Living innovation competition in order to find new business models, services, service concepts, products and digital solutions to make everyday life and housing easier.

The construction industry is undergoing a change, which will show in housing construction developing towards housing business. This will increase demand for services making everyday life easier and smoother. In addition, consumers are looking for more diverse ownership solutions, which can lead to a situation where housing is purchased as a service in future.

“YIT wants to be one step ahead and respond to consumers’ changing expectations by developing attractive services for consumers to complement its housing construction in order to make their everyday life easier. After the competition, it would be interesting to hear about ideas related to the sharing economy, logistics, security and property management,” says Arto Nieminen, Development Manager at YIT.

YIT will invite teams of two to three persons to the competition—such as innovators, service designers, software designers and growth companies. The selected six to eight teams have the chance to become familiar with YIT’s operations and will participate in a two-day hackathon at the end of January. The teams’ best ideas will be implemented as pilot projects of approximately EUR 20,000.

The competition jury consists of growth entrepreneur Micke Nordman, segments director Antti Inkilä (YIT, Housing Finland), director Pekka Helin (YIT Corporation), growth entrepreneur, YIT board member Inka Mero and Arto Nieminen. The jury will select the winners based on the importance of the selected challenge and the inventiveness, business value and feasibility of the solution.  The winner will be announced in February 2017.

Qualifying for the Hack the Living competition is open until December 16: https://industryhack.com/hacks/hacktheliving/

The growth company Industryhack and the open innovation competitions offered by it serve as a platform that combines the programming community and companies. The competitions always set out from company-specific challenges, in which new technologies and ideas for agile experiments and productive business models are sought through external players.

Further information:

Arto Nieminen, Development Manager, YIT Corporation, tel. +358 40 099 1226, arto.nieminen@yit.fi

Hanna Malmivaara, Vice President, Communications, YIT Corporation, tel. +358 40 561 6568, hanna.malmivaara@yit.fi

Follow Hack the Living in Twitter #hacktheliving 

YIT creates a better living environment by developing and constructing housing, business premises, infrastructure and entire areas. Our vision is to bring more life into sustainable cities. We want to stand out by taking a genuine interest in our clients and with insightful urban development, committed project implementation and inspiring leadership. Our growth engine is urban development involving partners. Our operating area covers Finland, Russia, the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. In 2015, our revenue amounted to nearly EUR 1.7 billion and we employ about 5,300 employees. Our share is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki. www.yitgroup.com