Learning Through Collaboration: Coaching Healthcare Startups in Oulu

What has been especially rewarding over the past two years is the opportunity to apply many of these research perspectives in practice through startup coaching and entrepreneurial support activities within Oyster Incubator.

Together with Petri Ahokangas and Raushan Aman, we have worked closely with startup teams on topics related to business development, customer journeys, strategic thinking, and the commercialism of ideas. Through workshops and coaching sessions, we have supported incubatees in trend analysis, customer journey mapping, persona development, prototyping, and testing.

For me personally, one of the most interesting aspects of this work has been seeing how concepts from strategic management and ecosystem research become highly relevant in early-stage entrepreneurship. Many startups initially focus strongly on the product or technical solution itself. However, especially in healthcare environments, innovation rarely succeeds based only on technology. Startups also need to understand the broader ecosystem surrounding their solution — who influences adoption, who creates value, who pays, who uses the service, and how different stakeholders interact.

This became a recurring theme during many of our workshops.

In healthcare startup environments, identifying the “customer” is often more complicated than teams initially expect. The end user, the decision-maker, and the paying customer are not always the same actor. A digital health solution may be used by patients, recommended by healthcare professionals, evaluated by hospital management, and funded by municipalities or healthcare organizations. As a result, startups need to think beyond a single target customer and understand multiple stakeholder perspectives simultaneously.

Through our workshops, we encouraged teams to reflect on these different persona types and stakeholder roles. Customer journey mapping and persona development became particularly useful tools in helping startups analyze the motivations, frustrations, expectations, and decision-making processes of different actors within the healthcare ecosystem.

In many cases, these discussions helped teams recognize assumptions they had not previously questioned. Some teams realized that while their solution addressed a real patient need, they had not fully considered the incentives or concerns of healthcare providers or organizational decision-makers. Others discovered that communication and onboarding challenges could become major barriers to adoption even when the technology itself worked well.

These kinds of discussions often shifted the focus from purely technical thinking toward more strategic and ecosystem-oriented thinking.

Another interesting observation during the workshops was how trend analysis encouraged teams to move beyond short-term problem-solving. Discussions about healthcare transformation, digitalization, platformisation, and changing user expectations helped startups think more broadly about where healthcare services and technologies may be heading in the future. Rather than focusing only on immediate product development, teams were encouraged to think about positioning, long-term value creation, and ecosystem dynamics.

At the same time, prototyping and testing activities reminded teams that innovation is ultimately a learning process. Early-stage ideas rarely emerge fully developed. Through experimentation, iteration, and feedback, startups gradually refine both their solutions and their understanding of the market.

What has also made this experience particularly valuable is the collaborative environment surrounding the OYSTER incubator activities. Together with teams from BusinessOulu and Oulu University of Applied Sciences, we have been able to exchange perspectives and experiences across different organizational and disciplinary backgrounds.

I have personally found it fascinating to work across three different organizations that share a common interest in supporting entrepreneurship and innovation. Each organization approaches startup support somewhat differently — from academic and research-oriented perspectives to practical business development and regional ecosystem building. These differences often create productive discussions and complementary viewpoints during coaching and workshop activities.

More broadly, this experience has reinforced my belief that entrepreneurship education and startup coaching are not simply about teaching business tools or providing ready-made answers. They are about helping teams think strategically, challenge assumptions, understand ecosystems, and learn through experimentation and collaboration.

For me, one of the most rewarding parts of this journey has been the opportunity to connect academic research with practical entrepreneurial support. Seeing how ideas from strategic management, platform ecosystems, and healthcare innovation can directly support startup teams in real-world settings has made the experience both professionally and intellectually meaningful.

As healthcare and digital innovation ecosystems continue to evolve, the ability to combine strategic thinking, customer understanding, and ecosystem awareness will become increasingly important for startups. Over the past two years, working together with entrepreneurial teams, educators, and innovation experts has shown us how valuable collaborative learning environments can be in supporting that development.

Author

Mahmoud Mohamed
Postdoctoral Researcher at Oulu Business School, Martti Ahtisaari Institute