EUBIC
LEARNING CAMP
May 15-17 2014, Finland

EUBIC Learning Camp gathered together more than a
dozen experts on university-business-cooperation in
May 2014 in Porvoo, Finland.
!
Purpose of the event was to create a forum for the
participants to meet and share experiences as much as
possible - to go beyond from ”benchmarking” to
”benchlearning”.
!
This document features some of the discussions and
findings from the camp. Presentations are available
from EUBIC website eubic.fi/en/ or via this link: http://
bit.ly/eubic-material
!
We wish thank you all the participants for your
enthusiasm and spirit!
!
!
Facilitators of EUBIC Learning Camp,
!
Mikko Markkanen, mikko.markkanen@businessarena.fi
!
Toni Pienonen, toni.pienonen@businessarena.fi

SOME OF THE
QUESTIONS
THE CAMP SET
OUT TO TAKCLE

DISCUSSION AND
OBSERVATIONS
”Word ’commercialization’ is misunderstood. Each system has its own
language - it’s only natural we don’t understand each other.”
!
”Anyone working in university-business-cooperation has a huge
task in marketing. Every time. Reporting things in a way that
everyone understands it - telling in layman terms what you’re
doing. Otherwise no one knows what you are about.”
!
”Whole education system was designed for industrial society.
Manufacturing. Current business world needs a different logic.”
!
”World is changing - education is changing. What they teach at
university is often outdated. I need the latest knowledge - where
do I learn it? In practice.”
!
”We need to understand concepts and systems. This is what companies
are doing. Traditional education system puts things into separate silos, we
don’t want that. Project-based learning creates teams - that’s the key!”
!
”Landscape of business life has disintegrated into smaller
companies - this challenges the ways of UBC.”
!
”Estonia is excellent in sourcing ideas from elsewhere and putting the
pieces together. That’s one the reasons for our success.”

”If you do all services free of charge, for companies there’s less
commitment and perceived benefits. Don’t do it!”
!
”TU Berlin: Strategic focus on responding to societal
challenges in the university vision.”
!
”Steering groups should be held accountable for the results of
the projects, like company boards.”
!
”Commercialization is often too much focused on
personal idea. Especially in social sciences we need to
solve complex challenges, that bring together
multidisciplinary teams.”
!
”In Estonia there isn’t going back to old ways. Change is
accepted. Such an environment drives things ahead - and we
need to nurture it!”
!
”Universities should use students as door openers
between university and business - more focus on the
”after sales”, shared learning. Where is the customer
relationship management of internships, projects and
thesis work?”
!
”How do we increase the (temporary) people flow between
universities and business, the role of universities in businesses’
strategy, and involve university representatives in strategic
decision-making?”

Observation from Central Finland: promoting UBC is about culture.
Those tasked with promoting it within their university, should lead the
change from inwards via key individuals.
Don’t lead the masses
Lead the key individuals,
resource them, make success
stories and cases visible

EXISTING MODELS AND SOLUTIONS
THAT WERE PRESENTED /
DISCUSSED ABOUT AT THE CAMP

(FINLAND)
• Ground-breaking in the Finnish ecosystem
• Student-driven, independent of Aalto University activities
• Exceptional investor / mentor network on international scale; Startup Sauna is able to
reach the right people, helping start-ups to learn from them - very valuable experience
!
Clear offering: easy to sell
!
• Startup Sauna recruits all around Scandinavia, Russia and Baltics
• Essentially about couple months of intensive start-up building: hype, culture,
responding to changes in global employment market (young people don’t see long
careers in established businesses)
!
Barriers and limitations
!
• Offering is clear, but quite limited: any applicant attending the program needs to create
a product in few months.
• Too short time for many valuable cases. If you are already past this early-stage point,
the program doesn’t have that much to offer to you. This rules out several potential
businesses.
• Limitations are more evident when it comes to resource-intensive ideas. That’s where
Startup Sauna is failing at; good research that could be commercialized, brought to the
markets, but Startup Sauna is not the right tool for that. it lacks long term
commitment.
!
How to improve upon and make use of Startup Sauna?
• Aalto and other universities should make use of the networks from Startup Sauna and
create a parallel track for more research-oriented commercializations that need more
time to develop.

Prototron (Estonia)
!INPUT: What is needed to make
activity happen (resources,
people, information)? !
!
- Prototype ideas (tangible product
required, around 50% IT / 50%
everything else)!
!
- Money and business angels
(Swedbank uses Prototron as a
marketing tool, snow-ball effect that
accumulates resources)!
!
- Selection committee from
ecosystem: finance, uni, businesses,
different fields
Who organizes the activity?!
- Tehnopol science park, Tallinn Univeristy of Technology, etc
(steering committee)!
!!
What takes place during the activity?!
- Selection & coaching -> business model!
- Process of improving the idea!
!!
Scale of the activity?!
- 4 rounds, total 400 proposals!
- 12 ideas are funded
OUTPUT: What are the practical
results and outcomes?
!
- 12 funded ideas!
!
- free publicity!
!!
- shortcut to incubators!
!
- business angel network, fiannces

Mektory (Estonia)
!INPUT: What is needed to make
activity happen (resources,
people, information)? !
!
- Competition to activate students and
help them generate good ideas ->
winning prize: trip to Silicon Valley!
- Students with good business ideas
- Sponsors 20-30 (Estonian-based
companies)
- Professors and univeristy sends
students to Mektory
Who organizes the activity?!
- Innovation and business centre of Tallinn University of
Technology, 4 people!
!!
What takes place during the activity?!
- Marketing + competition
- Workshops, meetings, seminars, prototyping
- 4-6 events / day!
!!
Scale of the activity?!
- 4 rounds, total 400 proposals!
- 10 ideas are funded
OUTPUT: What are the practical
results and outcomes?
!
- around 10 spin off business ideas
- new way of working with university
- potential game changer

PORVOO CAMPUS
Haaga-Helia and Laurea universities
of applied sciences
!
Inquiry-based learning: students learn by doing
real projects for businesses. In total, the campus
has around 60 commissions / year.
!
”We don’t teach just basic skills, but meta
competencies (teamwork, communication, etc).
Learning happens outside the school.”
!
”We are all learners here in the same process -
students, teachers and business.”
Before, teachers were used to working alone. Not
anymore. Teachers spend a lot of time learning
from students and businesses - and on the field,
enabling projects.
!
!

”innoSPICE is a standard based model for
innovation, knowledge- and technology transfer. It
is an evaluation procedure that can help
knowledge-intense institutions generate more
innovation while helping investors and research
institutions optimize public funds to achieve
economic added value.”
!
http://innospice.ning.com/

(Finland)
• Market/problem driven taken for granted
• Generation of ideas on open forums always free
implementation
• Options to form projects according to types of
innovations:
– 100% public projects with major share of
public funding, access to results and rights
– ”Cluster projects” for groups of companies
wanting to share results and IP
– 100% confidential projects executed under
strict non-confidentiality agreements, IP
ownership of results always transferred to
clients

NEW SOLUTIONS CREATED
BY CAMP PARTICIPANTS

”SOCIAL ARTICULATOR”
Sari L.
Siemon S.
Solveig R.
Corinna M.

MARKET PULL
Touchpoints
with students
and researchers
of social sciences
& ”hard
sciences”
SERVICE
SOCIAL ARTICULATOR
OUTCOMES
!
!
• Solutions for
businesses, public
sector and society
!
• Students finding
their own path and
ways to use their
expertise, new
student businesses
!
• Company spin-outs
!
• Research projects
!
• Contracted projects
!
• New IPR (no
patents, but
concepts, brands,
etc.)
Industry, society, service sector,
politics, etc. present real-life
problems that need solving
Wicked problems
Social issues
Real-life problems from
business / public / NGO
- especially important in the beginning
to get some good ones
SOCIAL MIXING
CHAMBER
!
Facilitating and
accommodating
solutions for societal
problems, e.g ”how to
deal with robotics in
real-life”
!
→ proof-of-concept
projects, etc.
Service organizes communication, bringing
people together, facilitation, problem
identification, dissemination of ideas, contract
formation
Here’s the catch! As a general rule, students and
researchers of social sciences are more interested in
societal impact, rather than ”money making” - this
needs to be reflected in the marketing.
Sari L.
Siemon S.
Solveig R.
Corinna M.

”NETWORKING PROGRAM”
Kaisa K.
Kersti P.
Mikko K.
Evariste H.

Networking
Program
Question:
How
many
relevant
business
contacts
does
a
resercher
have?
!
Answer:
X?
!
!
…Not
enough
-­‐
it
needs
to
be
at
least
10X!
!
!

Networking
Program
How
to
get
to
10X?
1. Measure
no
of
contacts,
evaluate
relevance
2. Set
new
targets
individually,
to
the
team,
faculty
etc.
Define
networking
as
KPI.
3. Set
individual
plans
to
enhance
networking
and
business
engagement
!
Actions:
Events,
business
conferences,
workshops,
business
breakfasts,
alumni
engagemeint,
mentorships,
social
media…
What
ever
means
needed
to
find
meaningful
contacts
!
!

Networking
Program
• Needs:
– Need
for
new
meaningful
contacts
and
cooperation
– Need
to
create
value
to
society
through
economic
activity
– Practical
applications
through
scientific
knowledge
• Benefits:
– Better
mutual
understanding
of
business
reality
and
the
research
world
– Better
utilisation
of
universities
resources
– Value
co-­‐creation
– Better
understanding
of
the
the
”big
picture”
– Merging
different
working
cultures
• Scale
– University
wide,
tailor
made
for
different
fields
of
research
– All
levels,
management
included
• Barriers
– Lack
of
time;
Contradicting
expectations;
Lack
of
motivation
and
focus;
Cultural
differences;
Attitude
and
resistance
to
change
–
people
want
to
stay
in
their
comfort
zone

Networking
Program
How
to
test
the
model?
1. Get
some
expertise
in
networking
(guide
and
help
with
planning,
along
with
support)
2. Apply
to
a
limited
group
ie
a
university
department
3. Execute
and
monitor
for,
say
6
months
4. Analyse
results,
find
best
practices
5. Evangilise
and
expand
!

”FITNESS TEST”
Anu K.
Aivar P.
Heidi F.
Marju-Riitta I.

”FITNESS TEST”
!
Make companies ”active for life”, find common
culture and language between universities and
companies. Make time and space for co-creation.
!
FITNESS TEST
• Set of tests:
• interview
• focus group
• diagnostic tools
• service design for fuzzy front end
!
PERSONAL TRAINER
- goal setting, NABC
- wellbeing agreenment = next steps
- R&D needs
!
”EXERCISE ROULETTE” ACTIVITIES, 1-6 MONTHS
- For one company, similar companies or ones
with similar issues
- 1: Beginners
- 2: Intermediate
- 3: Advanced
- Funding, project leader, research,
development, prototypes and products

WHAT NEXT?

• If you were to test these
different solutions in a new
project with international
partners, here are few
thoughts how you could
organize the lifespan of the
project to make development
more agile
!
• Our suggestion: don’t freeze
everything in the project plan,
make sure it allows iteration
and experimentation-driven
development
!
• ”Think BIG, act small” - Anssi
Tuulenmäki

Keeping in mind the principles of experimentation . . .
(c) Anssi Tuulenmäki, Aalto University

. . . example of how the project could look like?
FIRST
EXPERIMENTS
(by yourself)
!
Experimenting the solutions
small scale in different
universities / regions. Fail fast,
learn fast. Gather customer/user
feedback. Analyze and filter out
experiences.
SHARING THE
EXPERIENCES
(together)
!
Socialization: meet and share
experiences, what worked and
what didn’t?
Externalization: find patterns and
differences
Combination: create new plans,
focus on what worked and move
onto bigger scale
€"
!
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!
€"
!
€"
!
€"
!
€"
!
€
LARGE-SCALE
EXPERIMENTS
(by yourself)
! Internalization: doing, testing
!
Move forward with those
experiments that worked, tweak
and adjust.
€"
!
€"
!
€"
Meeting with other project partners Meeting with other project partners
!
€
SHARING
EXPERIENCES
AGAIN
(together)
!
Socialization: meet and share
experiences, what worked and
what didn’t with bigger?
Externalization: find patterns and
differences again
Combination: create new plans,
focus on what worked, semi-freeze
the solutions and launch
”BEST”
SOLUTION
(by yourself)
!
Internalization: taking
the results into practice
with proven and tested
models, pooling in the
remaining resources
€
Plenty of small scale experiments,
from 0 EUR to few thousand
Having filtered out those solutions
that didn’t work, increasing the scale of experiments
Analyze
the solutions
Filter out the
badly performing
solutions
Analyze
Filter out the
badly performing
solutions
€
Pooling in the remaining resources,
establishing permanent models with
proven results

RECAP OF THE CAMP
What worked? What didn’t? What should be done differently?
What will you take into practice? What did you learn?
”I came with problems, returning home
with solutions and ideas. I had never
before understood how universities of
applied sciences work, putting
education and UBC together.”
”I realized Palmenia works like a
regional development agency. Same
issues.”
”We need people who break the rules.”
”Having entrepreneurs and researchers
at the camp would’ve been nice. We
were perhaps too much in agreement.”
”Fantastic people!”
”Good people and contacts.”
”Timetables worked very well.”
”Good spirit.”
”Ecosystem model was bit confusing.”
”Different points of view affect UBC a
great deal.”
”Best thing - meeting new people.”
”More compressed time table would’ve
been better, no program on Saturday.”

Documentation
Toni Pienonen / Business Arena Oy
0400 737 238, toni.pienonen@businessarena.fi