Finnish cities publish remarkable quantities of open data — footfall counts, zoning changes, permit applications, event calendars, demographic shifts, traffic patterns, public transport usage, construction pipelines. This data is free, current, and highly relevant to local business decisions. Yet the businesses that could benefit most — independent cafés, retailers, service providers, small contractors — never use it. The interface is a developer portal. The output is a JSON feed. There is no layer between raw municipal data and the business owner sitting in their shop wondering whether to hire a summer employee, open a second location, or change their opening hours. The opportunity is to build that layer: a spatial, visual, SME-facing intelligence tool that translates city open data into concrete business signals — not dashboards for analysts, but answers to the questions small business owners actually ask every day.​

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Which open data streams are genuinely decision-relevant for SMEs — footfall, demographics, competitor permits, event schedules, construction disruptions, transit changes — and which are noise for a non-analyst business owner? What is the right interface for an SME owner with no data background: an AI-powered conversational query, a spatial map layer, a weekly digest, an alert? How do you combine multiple open data sources to surface insights that none of them contain alone — for example, correlating a new tram stop opening with residential density growth and retail permit activity to identify an emerging micro-location opportunity?​

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In this project we are looking to create an SME intelligence prototype — a working spatial tool that ingests real Oulu open data sources and surfaces business-relevant insights for a defined SME type. Non-technical SME owners must be able to interpret the output without explanation.​