Defense Day

Defense Day Mission:

Shorten the Distance Between Need and Solution

The public debate sends a clear message: defence innovation and development need to accelerate. Faster decision-making, reduced bureaucracy, and stronger ecosystem alignment will be essential moving forward. While some actors are already driving change, further action is needed.

At Defense Day, key stakeholders from across the Nordic defense and innovation system come together to move from words to action. The focus is on speed, collaboration, and tangible impact – across borders, sectors, and systems – to understand and overcome barriers.

Amyna – the defense innovation platform at Ideon Science Park – organizes the day with a clear mission: to shorten the distance between need and solution.

Authorities, armed forces, defense and security organizations, system suppliers, primes, SME’s, academia, as well as policy makers, gather to:

- - remove bottlenecks
  - speed up collaboration and action
  - enable and speed up testing, procurement, and implementation

A Working Arena

Defense Day is not a traditional conference. It is a working arena and forum for discussion for those who want to build – and scale – the Nordic defense innovation ecosystem.

Defense Day 2026 – Outcomes & Key Takeaways Report

On 21 April 2026, Defense Day gathered more than 350 stakeholders from across the defense, security, dual-use, innovation, and resilience ecosystem for a full day of discussions, collaboration, and strategic exchange.

The event was organized by Ideon Science Park and developed as a high-level working forum focused on strengthening cooperation between industry, public actors, academia, investors, and defense-related organizations. Through 21 moderated discussions across seven thematic tracks, participants discussed some of the most challenging barriers facing the Nordic and European defense innovation ecosystem.

This report summarizes the key insights, challenges, opportunities, and recommendations that emerged throughout the day.

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Download the full report to explore findings, track summaries, and proposed actions in detail.

Key Takeaways

- Fragmentation remains one of the biggest barriers to innovation. Actors, initiatives, funding mechanisms, procurement pathways, and infrastructure are often disconnected, creating duplication of efforts, inefficiencies, and slower innovation cycles.
- Procurement is both the largest bottleneck and the most powerful lever for change. Participants consistently highlighted the need for faster, more demand-driven procurement models that enable experimentation and innovation adoption.
- Trust, relationships, and networks continue to drive collaboration. While trusted networks accelerate progress, they can also create barriers for startups and new entrants, highlighting the need for more structured and accessible collaboration platforms.
- Startups and SMEs are critical contributors to future capability development. However, they remain systemically challenged by procurement structures, funding mechanisms, access to testbeds, and limited exposure to end users.

- Nordic collaboration represents a significant untapped opportunity. Greater alignment around procurement, funding, standards, infrastructure, and capability development could create a stronger and more competitive regional ecosystem.
- Space, AI, communications, autonomous systems, and critical infrastructure emerged as strategically important capability areas requiring long-term investment and coordination.
- Innovation should be recognized as a warfighting function. The Ukraine war demonstrates that innovation is not primarily a technology challenge, but a combat capability rooted in culture, incentives, procurement, regulation, and collaboration. The side that can identify battlefield problems, adapt faster, and scale solutions more effectively gains operational advantage. Innovation therefore acts as a cross-cutting function that enables all other warfighting functions.

Looking Ahead

Defense Day 2026 demonstrated a strong willingness among stakeholders to collaborate across traditional organizational boundaries. The report concludes with a number of proposed short- and long-term actions aimed at strengthening the Nordic and European defense innovation ecosystem, accelerating capability development, and improving collaboration between government, industry, academia, investors, and end users.

Continue the Dialogue in Working Groups

Following the discussions at Defense Day 2026, several participants expressed interest in continuing the dialogue and helping drive concrete actions forward. Ideon Science Park and Amyna are therefore exploring the creation of recurring working groups focused on key themes identified throughout the event.