Aihearkisto: Articles in English

Open Digi Campus Technical Challenges

20.12.2017Articles in English, Kokeilut, protot ja demot, LAMK RDI JournalLAMKpub

The Open DigiCampus project (2017–2018), funded by the KIRA-digi programme, boosts the digitalisation of the built environment and construction sector by creating an open and interoperable information management ecosystem for the built environment. The KIRA-digi programme is the Government’s key programme involving ministries, municipalities and the KIRA forum. The project focuses on digitalisation of the new campus of the Lahti University of Applied Sciences and this article describes the technological challenges of the digicampus.

Authors: Timo Turunen, Satu Hyökki, Hannu Kaikonen & Minna Asplund

Introduction

Lahti University of Applied Sciences has been building a new campus, which is based strongly on future working needs in study, research and administrative work. One starting point is to enable an appropriate and flexible working environment, which is supported by digitalisation. One aim of this is to permit round-the-clock working in the rooms on campus by giving the students a possibility to obtain RFID tags for access to premises.

The Open DigiCampus (2017) project boosts the digitalisation of the new campus by creating an open and interoperable information management ecosystem for the new campus.

Operations on the new campus are concentrated mainly in two locations. The wide campus area and the number of the actions in there gives challenges to handle what happens and where. This makes it necessary to organise the user guidance in the facilities. There is also a need for knowing the utilisation degree of the resources and the locations of different groups and persons. For that reason, there has to be flexible ways to reserve and release the resources always according to the specific needs. It is also important in the future to be able to develop applications, that can make use of the resource and reservation statistics.

To achieve these goals sets technical challenges. Those challenges are presented next, starting from the sub-functions and approaching the big picture.

Architectural overview

First, the architectural overview of the Open Digi Campus Service Environment is presented in Figure 1. The environment is built around the Peppi Ecosystem and its integration parts, the Reservation Integration Point and the Open Data Portal. Then, there are the data source systems: Property Operator and Room Data IoT System. Lastly, there are the Common Digital services in the right part of the figure.

Figure 1. Open Digi Campus Service Environment – architectural overview.

The more detailed architecture is shown in Figure 2. This gives more technical information on the environment structure.

Peppi Ecosystem

Peppi Ecosystem is the core data warehouse of the Open Digi Campus Service Environment. The resource planning system of Lahti University of Applied Sciences has been implemented using Peppi. It is a common planning system of most Finnish educational organisations.

Peppi serves two interfaces for external services: the open data REST interface for getting data from Peppi and the private SOAP interface for bidirectional data transferring. The users of the interfaces are usually Peppi plugins or external service applications. An example of a Peppi plugin is the tilat.lamk.fi service, and an example of an external service application is the Property Operator Booking Service, which also handles other rooms than Open Digi Campus rooms.

The open data interface is an easy way to get data from Peppi. It is a modern RESTful service, which gives possibilities to use versatile queries for getting the reservation data. It is also a powerful protocol because it uses the internal fast data indexes of Peppi. Therefore, it is used in the tilat.lamk.fi service.

The private SOAP interface is more complex and even more versatile, but also more loading. It handles the data directly in the database of Peppi so it should be used carefully. The main challenge in using this interface is to take care of the integrity of the database. Therefore, it should be used for only very carefully designed and tested SOAP calls.

Room Data IoT System

Room Data IoT system is another data source for Open Digi Campus Service Environment. It collects information from the room sensors and transmits analysed data to the Reservation Integration Point service. This system is not yet defined very carefully, because it is being researched and piloted in the next few months.

The aim of this system is to get sensor data from the rooms. The data can be something like presence, temperature and concentration of carbon dioxide. The system collects the data from the sensors using embedded computers, which sends the data into the big data cloud service. (Yealamarthi, Aman & Abdelgawad 2017.)

Reservation Integration Point

Reservation Integration Point is the main connection node of the Open Digi Campus Service Environment. It serves interfaces for private bidirectional connections between the Peppi Ecosystem and common digital services like the Room Management service and Property Operator services.

This service gives a modern, safe and standardised RESTful interface instead of Peppi’s carefully used SOAP interface. It also handles the reservation conflicts and rights of the user services, which gives the main challenges for that point.

This service has been made and will be futher developed by the university’s own staff. In the future, the reservation information point can also include the commercial integration hub BizTalk.

Open Data Portal

Open Data Portal is a public connection node between the Peppi Ecosystem and Open Data services. It manages a public open data interface and portal web site. It also gets data from the external open data services and Property Operator data interface and relays them to the external users. Examples of these external open data services can be local weather information, bus schedules, restaurant menus and statistical information of the solar energy system. One challenge is to find a common definition for the RESTful service. It has not yet been defined, but it should be done before the Digital Signage service is implemented. If this service is not ready when it is needed, the Reservation Integration Point can temporarily handle these tasks. Both have the same kind of RESTful service.

Common Digital Services

Common Digital Services are applications that serve public web sites for people who need to see or make resource reservations. Digital Signage, Property Operator, Room Management, Study&Meet, tilat.lamk.fi and Office 365 Outlook are those services. There can also be more if new needs are found in the future. They can also be merged if it seems to be expedient.

All these services use common Reservation Integration Point to connect to the reservation database. Those services can poll availability of the resources and make new reservations if they have the right to do this and if there is free space for that. They can also even remove their own reservations or, if they have the rights, also remove other users’ reservations.

Digital Signage

One challenge on the real campus is to find places and people. The property surface area is so big and there are a lot of rooms and corridors, so people should be able to locate where they need to be and other people or groups they want to meet. The other challenge is to find places. For that, there is a digital Signage system that uses the Open Data Portal to get information that all groups need to know. Those groups can be students, lecturers, other staff and visitors.

One of the useful properties of the Digital Signage service is to show the way to the target place. Ten useful capabilities have been found (Penny 2012, 50-51) for interactive wayfinding:

Touchscreens
RFID
Barcode scanners
Multifloor/multiregion services
Conditional formatting
Customised views
Extra information
Emergency procedures
Easy updating
List management

The Digital Signage includes info TV’s, corridor signage displays and so on.

Property Operator

The Property Operator service is one externally administered application in the Open Digit Campus Service Environment. Besides their own external resources, it also handles some hired out campus rooms, such as big auditoriums. Those rooms should be reserved by both this service and the Peppi Ecosystem. This service should work so that it is possible to make a reservation if there is not already a reservation. Peppi has the main priority for those rooms.

This service has not yet been implemented. This will be based on the Study&Meet integration. The main challenges have been solved in that task. Reservation priorities must be handled well so the use of this service works fluently with the Peppi Ecosystem and the other reservations services.

Room Management

Perhaps the most important service of the new Open Digi Campus Service Environment is the Room Management service. This service has not yet been implemented, but it should handle the door displays outside the rooms, give the global web portal for making and viewing reservations and also include a mobile application for common mobile platforms like Android and IOS.

In the market, there are some possible existing applications. It is a challenge to define and choose or develop an appropriate application for this. At Ball State University, they had the same kinds of problems in choosing the best way to get a suitable application, and they chose to make it themselves. As they scanned the environment, they had a difficult time finding any scheduling software that met most of their needs. Instead, they found systems that were too expensive, too simple, too complex, ran on unsupported platforms, or used unsupported technologies. For these reasons, they decided to build the application they needed to manage their group study rooms. (Faust et al. 2010, 2.)

In the Open Digi Campus Service Environment, the result can be other than described above because the technology has been evolved since.

Study&Meet

The Study&Meet service already exists. It is the first external common digital service in the Open Digi Campus Service Environment. The integration of this service is the base of Reservation Integration Point. The first challenges of this integration point have been detected and solved in this development work.

The half-year future reservations and rooms dedicated for this service are polled once a day using the REST interface of the Reservation Integration Point. This is the main data synchronisation between this service and Peppi’s database. In the day views, the short-term reservations are polled, so the user view shows the live reservation situation. When this service needs to make new reservations, it polls this time window reservation three times to be sure that the space for this reservation is free. Secondly, when it needs to remove an existing reservation, it checks to verify that the reservation owner is this service.

Ultimately, the Reservation Integration Point accepts the creation or removal operations of the service. If the service tries to remove somebody else’s reservation, the integration point denies it.

Tilat.lamk.fi

Tilat.lamk.fi is the first-ever-made service for the Open Digi Campus Service Environment. It is made in the university’s own development staff. Because it is placed into the university’s own environment, it is called the Peppi plugin. This service uses Peppi’s open data interface. The interface has some restrictions, like missing persons in the reservation events. It has, however, been noted that it can live with those restrictions.

If, in the future, it seems necessary to have this now-restricted information, this service should be changed to use the Reservation Integration Point. The integration point can be programmed to handle almost all data fields in Peppi’s database. It can even process some operations that are not possible in Peppi’s native desktops.

This service has shown the principles of how to build interfaces and new services around the Peppi Ecosystem. Developing this service has presented several technical software challenges, but they have been solved and the service works quite well.

Figure 2. Open Digi Campus Service Environment – advanced architectural overview

Conclusion

There are many parts of the Open Digi Campus Service Environment that exist. However, some parts are still being developed, and to develop these parts sets many challenges, which still have to be solved. The main challenges are in the Room Management Service, the Digital Signage Service and the Room Data IoT System. It also has not yet been defined which information of the room data will be used in the informative resources.

First, the Room Management System should be defined and then ordered. The second priority is to get the Digital Signage Service. At the same time, the university students will develop the Room Data IoT System.

At any rate, the aim is to have the main parts of this environment working when the new campus is started. Secondary parts can be implemented when the campus is open.

References

Faust, B. D. & Hafner, A. W. & Seaton, R. L. 2010. OpenRoom: Making room reservation easy for students and faculty. Code4Lib Journal [Electronic journal]. 01 June 2010, Issue 10. [Cited 12 Sep 2017]. Available at: https://doaj.org/article/f03e86ee6ca54827a209798ccb3ba7e4

Open DigiCampus. 2017. KIRA-digi, Lahti University of University of Applied Sciences. [Cited 9 Dec 2017]. Available at: http://www.kiradigi.fi/en/3-experiments/ongoing-projects/open-digicampus.html

Penny, Janelle. 2012. Communicate campus-wide with digital signage: boost awareness and broadcast important messages with real-time sign updates. Buildings. Vol. 106 (5), (May 2012), 46-48, 50-51.

Yealamarthi, K. & Aman, Md.S. & Abdelgawad, A. 2017. An Application-Driven Modular IoT Architecture. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing [Electronic journal]. Volume 2017, Article ID 1350929. [Cited 9 Dec 2017]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1350929

About the authors

Timo Turunen, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Technology

Satu Hyökki, Project Director

Hannu Kaikonen, Project Manager

Minna Asplund, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Technology

Published 20.12.2017

Reference to this publication

Turunen, T., Hyökki, S., Kaikonen, H. & Asplund, M. 2017. Open Digi Campus Technical Challenges. LAMK RDI Journal. [Electronic journal]. [Cited and date of citation]. Available at: http://www.lamkpub.fi/2017/12/20/open-digi-campus-technical-challenges

Improving performance of the SME sector by developing business mentoring in international co-operation

19.12.2017Älykäs liiketoiminta, Articles in English, LAMK RDI JournalLAMKpub

The article is based on the Trust Me – Training for Unique Skills and Techniques for Mentoring project (2015-2018) aiming to elaborate a training of future SME mentors in international cooperation. The project was funded by Erasmus+ programme, KA2 Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices, Strategic partnerships for higher education. The project developed a sophisticated curriculum for mentors and started the development of networks of mentors with the long term objective to create national networks covering regions, countries and whole European regions. The Trust Me Business Mentor Skills Development Programme is aimed for those individuals who support SME owners and CEO’s to grasp business opportunities, solve problems and grow their business using mentoring skills in order to be effective and provide real added value.

Authors: Miika Kuusisto & Ulla Kotonen

Performance of SME sector

According to the SME Performance Review of the European Commission (2017e), SMEs are an important part of the non-financial business economy in Europe, also in Finland, France, Hungary and Romania, the partner countries of the Trust Me (2017) project.

Table 1. Basic facts of enterprises in Finland, France, Hungary and Romania (European Commission 2017a, 2017b, 2017c and 2017d)

Enterprise birth rates in 2014 ranged, among these four countries, from 7.9 % to 10.2 %. The average employment size of newly born enterprises ranged from 1.0 persons to 2.2 persons. In 2013, enterprise death rates were particularly low, between 5.2 % and 11.5 %. The lowest numbers of all rates were in Finland and the highest in Romania. (European Commission 2017f.)

Table 2. Business demography in Finland, France, Hungary and Romania (European Statistics 2017f)

Based on the Small Business Act for Europe (SBA), the EU’s flagship policy initiative to support small and medium-sized enterprises, Finland’s SME sector has one of the most competitive profiles in the EU. The Finnish SME sector surpasses the EU average in seven out of nine SBA principle areas. (2016 SBA Fact Sheet – Finland.) France’s SBA profile is, in most areas, in balance with the EU average, whereas Romania’s SBA profile gives a mixed picture, and Hungary’s SBA profile contains many weaknesses (European Commission 2017a, 2017b, 2017c and 2017d).

Figure 1. SBA profiles of Finland, France, Hungary and Romania compared with EU averages. (European Commission 2017a, 2017b, 2017c and 2017d)

In entrepreneurship, Romania is above the EU average but in internationalisation, environment, and skills and innovation, far behind the EU average. Skills and innovation seems to be the most problematic, less than in other countries. The Hungarian SME sector trails the EU average in six principles.

It is recognised in most countries that SMEs need special help for their growth. Traditionally, help is offered by facilitating the external environment and developing entrepreneurial culture and environment as well as access to finance. Nowadays, strengthening the internal capabilities is often seen as an alternative or supplementary strategy for SME development, and training is recognised as an important tool for developing the internal capabilities of SMEs (Manimala & Kumar 2012).

Training practices in SMEs

Based on the last Continuing vocational training survey by Eurostat (2010), the ratio of training employees seems to increase with the growth of the companies. In Hungary, the training intensity differs significantly between the size-categories. There, small companies invest visibly less in the training of their employees than medium- and large-sized companies or Finnish or French small and medium-sized companies. However, the Hungarian training intensity is higher than Romania, where the training level is much lower than all the other three countries and the average of EU countries.

Table 3. Distribution of companies providing any forms of training to their employees (in % of all companies in 2010) in Finland, France, Hungary and Romania (Eurostat 2010).

In addition to the training of employees, also training and competence development of managers is important in the SMEs. The OECD (2002) has reported a positive correlation between the level of managers’ training and SMEs’ performance. The International Labour Organisation (2014) has assisted governments, employers’ and workers’ organisations, and other institutions in scaling up management training and establishing support systems to address the needs of SMEs. Over the years, development in expertise, networks and supporting organisations, especially for start-ups, micro and small entrepreneurs, has occurred. On the other hand, large companies have their own in-company training programmes, and they invest in the training of managers and leaders. The medium-sized companies and their managers seem to be in some kind of gap when it comes to their own development. The biggest reasons for differences between the training of SMEs and large companies are financial and time resources, as well as efficiency expectations (Doe 2017). First, fewer resources of SMEs typically means less funding for training and limited options to invests in development. Thus, it is also more important to show increased employee and company performance. The limited financial resources are also seen in the use of time and difficulties in balancing working time and training time. SME managers especially have difficulties in finding time for training.

Business mentoring

It is obvious that SME managers also need support and training. Coaching, and especially mentoring, are seen as cost-efficient and flexible training methods for SME managers’ training. Utrilla & Torraleja’s study (2013) established that mentoring is an important tool for family businesses too. Both coaching and mentoring are “activities of professional and personal development with focus on individuals (and teams) and relying on the client’s own resources to help them to see and test alternative ways for improvement of competence, decision making and enhancement of quality of life. A professional coach or mentor is an expert in establishing a relationship with people in a series of conversations with the purpose of serving the clients to improve their performance or enhance their personal development or both, choosing their own goals and ways of doing it.” (European Mentoring and Couching Council & al. 2011, 3) Coaching is more about facilitating the client’s learning process by using professional methods and techniques, whereas mentoring is more like a development process involving a transfer of skills and knowledge from a more-experienced to a less-experienced person through learning dialogue (European Mentoring and Couching Council & al. 2011). Thus, business mentors should always have professional business competencies and experiences not only the methodological know-how.

In practice, business mentoring services and programmes are offered by a number of different national and regional SME supporting organisations as a part of their services. The mentoring services and programmes offered by the regional organisations of the Federation of Finnish Enterprises, in Finland, the Institute of the Entrepreneurial Mentoring (IME) in France, the Association of Young Entrepreneurs’ (FIVOSZ) and the National Research, Development and Innovation Office in Hungary are examples of this kind of mentoring services. There are also specific non-profit national and international mentoring organisations, such as the Business Mentors Finland (Suomen Yrityskummit), which is the largest nationwide mentoring network (a non-profit association) of experienced entrepreneurs and business managers in Finland and a global mentoring network MicroMentor.

Some of the business mentoring services are sector specific (e.g. ICT specific mentoring by the ACE consortium in several European countries, social enterprise focused mentoring by NESsT and !GEN Social Innovation Agency in Hungary). Respective, some of mentoring programmes, such as the Women business leaders mentoring programme by Finland’s Chamber of Commerce, MentorNet – a network of female mentors by the Foundation for Small Enterprise Economic Development (SEED) in Hungary – are targeted at certain smaller groups. In addition to the free-of-charge mentoring services, there are a lot of different private consultancy companies, such as Berater SRL and Integra HR SRL in Romania, the Business Mentoring Network in the UK, and the Management Mentors Europe as a part of the worldwide Management Mentors, Inc.

Mentoring Training Programmes

If you are a good business manager, it does not necessarily mean that you are also a good business mentor. Respectively, the mentoring skills without business experience are not enough for acting as a business mentor. In general, there are a huge number of different mentoring training programmes in Europe but only part of them have focused on business mentoring, and even a few of them are accredited by the European Mentoring and Couching Council (EMCC). In August 2017, there were no accredited Finnish mentors in the EMCC European Individual Accreditation (EIA) Holders register (EMCC 2017a) or accredited Finnish mentoring programmes in the EMCC EQA Holders register (EMCC 2017b). At the same time, there were six accredited training programmes in France and two programmes in Hungary. In Romania, there were two individual EIA holders, but no accredited mentoring programmes. In Hungary, there were five EIA accredited and 46 in France.

Also, in Finland, several organisations, also some of the universities, organise/have organised non-accredited mentoring trainings. However, those trainings are not focused on business mentoring, but for example on the mentoring of teachers, students, young talents, immigrants, job-seekers etc. Also, different health care sector-focused mentoring trainings have become more common. One of the latest examples of business mentoring training programmes are Business Mentor –valmennus by Vocational Adult Education Sedu in 2009 and South Savo Vocational College together with regional enterprise organisations and the Finnish Business Mentors Association.

Business Mentors’ Competence Framework

The European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), which develops, promotes and sets the expectation of best practices in mentoring and coaching in Europe, is a key player in experience sharing of mentors. It has published a mentor’s competence framework in 2009 (EMCC 2015). The competence framework works as an assessment tool by providing a description of a mentor at four distinct levels of development (Foundation, Practitioner, Senior Practitioner, and Master practitioner). It helps mentors understand their level of development and training providers to evaluate the behaviours of a mentor, to categorise the level that the mentor and the level and effectiveness of mentor training programmes.

The competency framework (EMCC 2015) is suitable for all kinds of mentoring, including eight competence categories focusing on personal and interpersonal skills, as well as the mentoring process: 1) Understanding self, 2) Commitment to self-development, 3) Managing the contract, 4) Building the relationship, 5) Enabling insight and learning, 6) Outcome and action orientation, 7) Use of models and techniques, and 8) Evaluation. As a general competence framework for mentors, it does not include any business or professional specific competencies, which are mentioned for example by Clutterbuck (2005) and Clutterbuck & Lane (2005). Based on the above-mentioned competence frameworks of mentoring and the benchmarking of existing mentoring training programmes, a business mentoring competence framework was defined in the Trust Me project. The competence framework consists of 10 business skills, a mentoring process and four soft mentoring skills:

Can analyse business environment
Can analyse market demand and supply
Can analyse, manage and develop business strategies
Can analyse, manage and develop production
Can analyse, manage and develop financial management
Can analyse, manage and develop investments
Can analyse, manage and develop human resources
Can analyse, manage and develop marketing
Can analyse, manage and develop logistics
Can analyse, manage and develop research, development and innovation activities
Can manage the mentoring process
Has self-awareness and behavioural awareness
Is able to manage mentoring relationships and communicate with a mentee
Is committed to own learning and interested in helping others
Is able to identify ethical questions and behave ethically

Trust Me Business Mentoring Training Programmes

Based on the identified competence requirements, a business mentoring training programme was developed in the international cooperation. The trainings are targeted to SME managers and to the master degree students with business entrepreneurship/business experience. Depending on the trainees’ backgrounds and experiences, training stays between levels one (Foundation) and two (Practitioner) in the four-level mentoring accreditation scale. The aim of the mentoring training is to give an understanding of the practice of mentoring and the core skills of mentoring. After the training, the mentoring trainee should be able to work as an internal mentor and carry out small external mentoring processes. The training makes it also possible to increase business know-how. The training consists of three contact days supported by an e-learning package and business simulation game. In an optimal situation, the training will continue with a real business mentoring case.

The training programme was piloted in Finland, France, Hungary and Romania during autumn 2017. The basic structure of the training was same in all of the countries, but the exercises and details were based on national/regional circumstances and the differences of target groups. In Finland, the first mentoring training pilot was 5 ECTS credits; it was offered as an elective study course for master degree students of Lahti UAS but also to regional SME managers and entrepreneurs. The master degree students of the universities of applied sciences are a good target group, because most of them have a long working history. One of the project’s results was also the Trainers’ Handbook, which includes a total of 18 exercises for each phase of the mentoring process: five for the preparatory phase, six for the negotiating/contracting phase, four for facilitating mentorship, and three for closing the mentoring process.

Future of the Business Mentoring Training Programme

In the future, the project partners as the organisers of the Trust Me Mentoring Training Programme can apply for the European Quality Award (EQA), a quality standard for mentoring programmes, to make training more recognisable. Also, the mentors who completed the Trust Me Mentoring Training Programme can apply for the European Individual Accreditation (EIA), an accreditation system for individual mentors and coaches, after gaining mentoring experiences.

References

Clutterbuck, D. 2005. Establishing and maintaining mentoring relationships: An overview of mentor and mentee competencies. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 3 (3), 2-9.

Clutterbuck, D. & Lane, G. 2005. The Situational Mentor: An International Review of Competences and Capabilities in Mentoring. London: Routledge.

Doe, K. 2017. Five key differences in small business training vs. big business training. Small Business Digest [Electronic magazine]. [Cited 8.8.2017]. Available at: http://www.2sbdigest.com/training-differences-between-small-businesses-corporations

European Commission. 2017a. 2016 SBA Fact Sheet Finland. [Online document]. [Cited 8.8.1017]. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/DocsRoom/documents/22382

European Commission. 2017b. 2016 SBA Fact Sheet France. [Online document]. [Cited 8.8.2017]. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/DocsRoom/documents/22382

European Commission. 2017c. 2016 SBA Fact Sheet Hungary. [Online document]. [Cited 8.8.2017]. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/DocsRoom/documents/22382

European Commission. 2017d. 206 SBA Fact Sheet Romania. [Online document]. [Cited 8.8.2017]. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/DocsRoom/documents/22382

European Commission. 2017e. SME Performance Review. Annual Report on European SMEs 2015/2016. [Online document]. [Cited 8.8.2017]. http://ec.europa.eu/growth/smes/business-friendly-environment/performance-review-2016_en

European Commission. 2017f. Structural business statistics overview. [Online document]. [Cited 8.8.2017]. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Structural_business_statistics_overview

European Mentoring & Couching Council (EMCC). 2015. The EMCC Competence Framework V2. [Online document]. [Cited 9.8.2017]. https://emcc1.app.box.com/s/4aj8x6tmbt75ndn13sg3dauk8n6wxfxq

European Mentoring & Couching Council (EMCC). 2016. EMCC Guidelines for Supervision. [Online document]. [Cited 9.8.2017]. https://emcc1.app.box.com/s/d4ydyhryok7usj2zp06dgcdiuho22lx6

European Mentoring & Couching Council (EMCC). 2017a. EMCC EIA Holders. [Online document]. [Cited 9.8.2017]. https://emcc1.app.box.com/s/vin9be1lljamrcjgxhkqmz3i4sibol8v

European Mentoring & Couching Council (EMCC). 2017b. EMCC EQA Providers. [Online document]. [Cited 9.8.2017]. https://emcc1.app.box.com/s/jsqd9fxbrcc8nfnrmc8fsm5am0ivzo45

European Mentoring and Coaching Council, International Coach Federation, Association for Coaching & Société Francaice de Coaching. 2011. Professional Charter for coaching and mentoring. [Online document]. [Cited 9.8.2017]. Available at: http://www.eesc.europa.eu/resources/docs/142-private-act–2.pdf

Eurostat. 2010. Continuing vocational training survey 2010. [Online document]. [Cited 8.8.2017]. Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/education-and-training/data/database

International Labour Organisation (ILO). 2014 Entrepreneurship and SME management training. [Online document]. [Cited 8.8.2017]. Available at: http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_emp/—emp_ent/—ifp_seed/documents/publication/wcms_175474.pdf

Manimala, M. J., & Kumar, S. 2012. Training needs of small and medium enterprises: Findings from an empirical investigation. IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, Vol. 1 (2), 97-110.

OECD. 2002. SMEs managers training. [Online document]. [Cited 8.8.2017]. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/cfe/smes/2492440.pdf

Trust Me –project. 2017. [Cited 15.12.2017]. Available at: https://www.trust-me-project.eu/index.php/en/

Utrilla, P. N. C., & Torraleja, F. Á. G. 2013. The importance of mentoring and coaching for family businesses. Journal of Management & Organization, Vol. 19 (4), 386-404.

About the authors

Kuusisto Miika, (Masters of BA), is a Senior Lecturer of logistics at Lahti University of Applied Sciences. He has been a project manager for Trust Me project, which developed a business mentor’s competence framework and training program in an international co-operation. His other competence areas are Supply web and business development, theses supervisions and RDI-activities.

Kotonen Ulla, DSc (Econ and Bus Adm), is an RDI Director of the Smart Business focus area at Lahti University of Applied Sciences. She has previously worked as an RDI Development Manager at Lahti University of Applied Sciences and FUAS – Federation of Universities of Applied Sciences, as well as a professor of accounting at Lappeenranta University of Technology’s School of Business.

Published: 19.12.2017

Illustration: https://www.flickr.com/photos/susanvg/3382838948 (CC BY-NC-SA)

Reference to this publication

Kuusisto, M. & Kotonen, U. 2017. Improving performance of the SME sector by developing business mentoring in international co-operation. LAMK RDI Journal. [Electronic journal]. [Cited and date of citation]. Available at: http://www.lamkpub.fi/2017/12/19/improving-performance-of-the-sme-sector-by-developing-business-mentoring-in-international-co-operation/

Good practices in bio-based circular economy in Vietnam

11.12.2017Articles in English, Kiertotalouden ratkaisut, LAMK ProLAMKpub

Circular economy is raising interest all over the world. In a bio-based circular economy, material and nutrient flows form loops. The article presents selected Vietnamese good practices in bio-based circular economy.

Authors: Vie Huynh and Susanna Vanhamäki

A brief overview of bio-based circular economy

Limited natural resources and climate change are driving us towards new economic and ecological solutions. Circular economy offers one answer to these challenges. In the current linear economy, natural resources are transformed into products and then dumped into the environment after being used. In a circular economy, however, material flows form loops: material is recycled for other purposes after usage. (EMF 2013)

The circular economy consists of biological and technical flows (EMF 2017). The bio-based circular economy concentrates on material in biological cycles, i.e. the circular use of bio-based resources e.g. bio-waste, wood products, wastewater sludge and agricultural residues.

Recently, circular economy has been adopted in international and national policies, showing that these nations are moving from rhetoric to action. In 2015, the European Commission (2015) released the Circular Economy Package, an action plan concerning the EU’s transition towards a Circular Economy. In addition, China and France have laws concerning circular economy (Balkau 2017). Nevertheless, in addition to strategies on national level, concrete actions are also necessary. In fact, in quite many cases, this is where the development begins.

The country discussed in this article, Vietnam, is at a stage where circular economy is not yet in strategic focus. However, local circular economy actions are still emerging.

Current state of the Vietnamese bio-based circular economy

During the 20^th century, the concept of closing the nutrient loops was implemented to some extent in Vietnam. In the agricultural sector, waste from one activity was used as input for another activity. However, due to rapid economic development, the use of chemicals has rapidly replaced the more sustainable but less profitable nutrient-loop model. This came with a heavy price to the environment. (Renewable matter 2017)

Currently, approximately 28 million tons of waste is annually released into the Vietnam environment, 46% of which comes from municipal sources (Schneider et al. 2017). It is interesting to note that 60-70% of the municipal solid wastes is bio-waste, which can be biologically recycled, e.g. turned into compost and/or biogas (Tran et al. 2014). However, the majority of solid waste in Vietnam is either burned or landfilled. For example, 76% of household waste in Vietnam’s biggest city – Ho Chi Minh City – is buried in landfill sites (Báo Mới 2017). This gap between potential and reality of recycling can be seen as potential in the development of a bio-based circular economy in Vietnam.

According to Báo Mới (2017), there has already been a project to categorize household wastes at source in six districts of Ho Chi Minh City, reaching 20-30% categorization rate. Nonetheless, the impact of this project is questionable, as there is insufficient processing technology and infrastructure in the city. The categorized wastes are just grouped back together after being transported to existing waste facilities. Should this project be applied more successfully on a larger scale, a significant amount of waste would be turned into useful materials (Tran et al. 2014).

The recycling industry in Vietnam is undeveloped and very fragmented. In this industry, there is an interesting line of work where people roam around landfill sites to collect recyclable materials and sell back to recycler for a living. This job is called “ve chai” in Vietnamese. However, this way of recycling is extremely inefficient, and “ve chai” collectors barely make a living. (Vietnam Online 2015)

Notable good practices in Vietnam

Biogas in Huế

From 2011 to 2014, BAJ – a Japanese non-profit organization – funded to install 37 biogas digesters in rural areas of Hue city (Bridge Asia Japan 2011; Bridge Asia japan 2014). Those digesters turn livestock manure into biogas, which was initially used for cooking and in-home lighting. These biogas systems have saved approximately 250 USD per month in cooking/lighting costs for each participating family. This amount is significant as Vietnamese GDP per capita is only around 2200 USD/year. The digesters have also led to the development of a street-lighting system utilizing excess biogas produced at night. Excess gas would have been wastefully released otherwise. These systems have made the previously unlit streets much safer for local people. (Khoahoc.tv 2013; Thuy Xuan ward’s People’s Committee 2014).

Bio-fertilizer in Đà Nẵng

A Japan International Co-operation Agency has provided 500,000 USD of funding to setup a biomass liquid fertilizer factory in Đà Nẵng city. This factory applies the organic waste circulation system developed in Chikujo (Japan) to turn municipal wastes into liquid fertilizer for agriculture activities. By 2016, initial testing facilities capable of processing 3.5 tons of waste a day have been operational. This new fertilizer reportedly helps crops to grow healthier. Excess use of the fertilizer does not result in chemical residuals in plants and land like other current chemical fertilizers. Furthermore, the price is roughly 10% that of their chemical counterparts, which greatly helps farmers, since they previously spent 10-20% of their revenue on fertilizers. (Vietnam News 2015)

Solid waste recycling in Đà Nẵng

In 2015, Đà Nẵng’s department of natural resources and environment, together with Vietnam Environment Corporation, introduced the first phase of the Khánh Sơn solid waste processing composite. The investment totals 40 million USD, resulting in a composite that can categorize and process 200 tons of household solid wastes a day. Wastes are turned into oil (industrial fuel), bio-char (soil-fertility supplement), and bricks (building materials). The facilities have achieved up to 0% solid landfill waste ratio. Its introduction has greatly reduced the burden on Khánh Sơn landfill site, which is imminently overloaded and is scheduled to close in 2020. (Tuổi Trẻ Online 2015)

Conclusions

The development of a circular economy in Vietnam is still in its infancy, both in terms of awareness, technology and infrastructure. There are few policies and investments backing this concept. The majority of financial and technological support comes from international environmental organization in the region, especially from Japan. There is, however, great potential in the management of municipal solid wastes. The majority of those wastes can be biologically recycled into valuable materials. Last but not least, although sporadic and limited in scope, there are a number of bio-based circular activities that hint at a promising future for Vietnam.

References

Balkau, F. 2017. Circular economy and regional implications. In: Massari, S., Sonnemann, G. & Balkau, F. (eds) Life cycle approaches to sustainable regional development. New York, USA: Routledge. 179-185.

Báo Mới. 2017. TPHCM: Mỗi ngày thải ra 8.300 tấn rác, chủ yếu là chôn lấp. [Electronic newspaper]. [Cited 17 Nov 2017]. Available at: https://baomoi.com/tphcm-moi-ngay-thai-ra-8-300-tan-rac-chu-yeu-la-chon-lap/c/22506862.epi

Bridge Asia Japan. 2011. 2011 Annual Report. [Online document]. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: http://www.baj-npo.org/english/downloads/BAJ_2011_Annual_Report.pdf

Bridge Asia Japan. 2014. 2014 Annual Report. [Online document]. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: http://www.baj-npo.org/english/downloads/2014%20Annual%20Report.pdf

EMF. 2013. Ellen MacArthur Foundation: Towards the Circular Economy. [Online publication]. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/publications/Ellen-MacArthur-Foundation-Towards-the-Circular-Economy-vol.1.pdf

EMF. 2017. Ellen MacArthur Foundation: Circular Economy System Diagram. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/interactive-diagram

European Commission. 2015. Closing the loop – an EU action plan for the circular economy. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A52015DC0614

Khoahoc.tv. 2013. Rác thải thành điện thắp sáng nông thôn (Waste to be turned into lighting for the countryside). [Electronic newspaper]. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: http://khoahoc.tv/rac-thai-thanh-dien-thap-sang-nong-thon-45882

Renewable matter. 2017. Vietnam Opens Up to the Circular Economy. [Electronic magazine]. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at:
http://www.renewablematter.eu/art/295/Vietnam_Opens_Up_to_the_Circular_Economy

Schneider, P., Le, H. A., Wagner, J., Reichenbach, J. & Hebner, A. 2017. Solid Waste Management in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: Moving towards a Circular Economy? Sustainability. [Electronic journal]. Vol 9 (2), 286. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/su9020286

Thuy Xuan ward’s People’s Committee. 2014. Lợi đủ điều từ hầm biogas (Benefits from Biogas pit). [Electronic newspaper]. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: https://thuyxuan.thuathienhue.gov.vn/?gd=3&cn=136&id=146&tm=10

Tran, T. M. D., Le, M. T. & Nguyen, T. V. 2014. Composition and Generation Rate of Household Solid Waste: Reuse and Recycling Ability – A Case Study in District 1, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. International Journal of Environmental Protection. [Electronic journal]. Vol 4 (6), 73-81. [Cited 14 Nov 2017]. Available at: www.academicpub.org/DownLoadPaper.aspx?paperid=15970

Tuổi Trẻ Online. 2015. Đà Nẵng có công nghệ xử lý chất thải rắn thành dầu, than (Da Nang now has the technology to process solid waste into oil and charcoal). [Electronic newspaper]. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: https://tuoitre.vn/da-nang-co-cong-nghe-xu-ly-chat-thai-ran-thanh-dau-than-767847.htm

Vietnam News. 2015. Da nang leads the way with organic fertilizers. [Electronic newspaper]. [Cited 15 Nov 2017]. Available at: http://vietnamnews.vn/society/270616/da-nang-leads-the-way-with-organic-fertilisers.html#7WrwClbmQyxGXeJm.97

Vietnam Online. 2015. Garbage and Recycling. [Cited 14 Nov 2017]. Available at: https://www.vietnamonline.com/living/garbage-and-recycling.html

Authors

Vie Huynh is a 2^nd year student in International Business at Lahti University of Applied Sciences.

Susanna Vanhamäki is the Project Manager for BIOREGIO project at Lahti University of Applied Sciences.

Published 11.12.2017

Illustration: https://pixabay.com/en/country-nature-rice-river-vietnam-2178853/ (CC0)

Reference to this publication

Huynh, V. & Vanhamäki, S. 2017. Good practices in bio-based circular economy in Vietnam. LAMK Pro. [Electronic magazine]. [Cited and date of citation]. Available at: http://www.lamkpub.fi/2017/12/11/good-practices-in-bio-based-circular-economy-in-vietnam/

Co-creating Rustenburg Circular Economy Road Map in South Africa

8.12.2017Articles in English, Kiertotalouden ratkaisut, LAMK ProLAMKpub

The city of Rustenburg is drafting a road map towards circular economy as a part of cooperation project Co-creating Sustainable Cities with Lahti (Finland) and Ho (Ghana). The road map is drafted with the help of baseline studies, stakeholder discussions and a series of three co-creation workshops in Rustenburg.

Author: Maarit Virtanen

The main objective in Rustenburg is the diversification of economy and creation of jobs through circular economy. Circular economy solutions would also support environmental protection and waste management aims. At the moment, the economy of region is based on mining. During the first two co-creation workshops, four main areas of interest have been identified: 1. Value creation through material recycling; 2. Composting of biodegradable waste; 3. Development of repair and reuse services; 4. Education and awareness raising.

Value creation through technical material recycling

In Rustenburg, the waste collection system covers most of the city area, except for rapidly spreading informal settlements. There is no official recycling of waste, but waste pickers circle the streets and landfill collecting and selling materials. The aim in Rustenburg is to formalise waste recycling, to introduce waste separation at source to households and businesses, and eventually to process some of materials in the area. There are altogether 13 buy back centres for materials in Rustenburg, but the processing is done in Pretoria, Johannesburg or other locations.

Figure 1. Waste pickers taking materials to a buy back centre

Waste separation at source will enhance the material recovery from waste and ease material processing, as organic waste is separated from other materials. It will also provide better income and working conditions for waste pickers and recyclers. Separation at source can be introduced through pilots at selected businesses and communities. The pilots help to specify, which materials should be sorted at source and which can be sorted at the collection or transfer sites. There are already markets for different types of plastics and papers, cardboard, glass and metals.

To ensure effective collection of recyclable materials, sites for sorting and storing of materials should be established. Currently, transportation is a challenge for recyclers working in townships outside the city centre, and there are problems with littering, when recyclers sort the waste on streets. In the designated sites, recyclers could do the final sorting of materials, after which materials were transported in larger quantities to the existing buy back centres in Rustenburg. Once the process of collection, sorting and sales is functioning, the income from sales can be invested in, for instance, bailers, shredders and transport trucks. Further investment can be sought for a conveyor belt to ease the sorting.

The recycling process can be further developed by establishing municipal buy back centres, if this is seen as an economically viable option instead of selling materials through existing centres. Once the availability of recyclable materials is ensured, processing of some materials can be developed. These can include, for example, manufacturing of pellets from PET bottles, or manual handling of WEEE to separate most valuable components for sale.

Composting of biodegradable waste

The composting of biodegradable waste, including garden waste, kitchen waste and organic waste from businesses will help to divert waste from the landfills and makes the separation of recyclable materials from waste easier and more profitable.

The composting can also be begun with a pilot on, for example, restaurants and selected residential areas. The pilot can be done with open air composting, but it should also be studied, whether, for instance, drum composting could be used to improve the efficiency. After the composting systems is functioning, the ready compost can be sold for agriculture or be utilised by the municipality.

If the collection of biodegradable waste proves successful, and the amounts of organic material are adequate, production of biogas can be a viable option. One pilot scale biogas plant is in operation in Rustenburg, with positive experiences on both gas production and utilisation of compost for gardening. However, as biogas production requires investments, it must be ensured that there is a reliable feedstock for the production.

Development of repair and reuse services

One of key elements in circular economy is to lengthen product lifetime through reuse, remanufacturing and repairing. There is a large number of small-scale repair services in Rustenburg for various products scattered around the town. Industrial estates are developed in Rustenburg for different townships, and these could also act as centralised areas for repair services.

Concentrating services in certain areas could promote the accessibility of services through joint marketing and the entrepreneurs could develop the services together through, for example, join investment on machinery. In addition, proper waste management and recycling would be easier to provide, if the activities were located in certain areas.

Figure 2. Services available at an informal settlement

Education and awareness raising

An important part of circular economy is integrating it into education at different levels to enable broader change in, for example, product design, consumption patterns and business models.

The existing environmental awareness raising programs with schools and other stakeholders can be used and further developed to promote circular economy thinking. In Rustenburg, this can in the long run include also establishing college or university degree programs on circular economy.

Next Steps

The next steps in cooperation are specifying the activities and funding opportunities for circular economy pilots. Work is already well under way in Rustenburg in both formalisation of waste picking and piloting the separation at source. There is also interest for cooperation with Finnish companies, and the aim is to invite some of them to the next co-creation workshop in Rustenburg in March 2018. The Circular Economy Road Map will be integrated into municipal plans to promote the implementation of activities.

The road map and cooperation in Rustenburg is a part of Co-creating Sustainable Cities project funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. Lahti University of Applied Sciences implements the project together with the City of Lahti in 2017-2018. (Lahti University of Applied Sciences 2017.)

References

Lahti University of Applied Sciences. 2017. Co-creating Sustainable Cities Project. [Cited 4 Dec 2017]. Available at: http://www.lamk.fi/english/projects/co-creating-sustainable-cities

About the author

Maarit Virtanen is the Project Manager for Co-creating Sustainable Cities and Kiertoliike projects at Lahti University of Applied Sciences.

All pictures by the author.

Published 8.12.2017

Reference to this publication

Virtanen, M. 2017. Co-creating Rustenburg Circular Economy Road Map in South Africa. LAMK Pro. [Electronic magazine]. [Cited and date of citation]. Available at:
http://www.lamkpub.fi/2017/12/08/co-creating-rustenburg-circular-economy-road-map-in-south-africa/

How to Recognise and Exploit Outlooks in SME Level

7.12.2017Älykäs liiketoiminta, Articles in English, LAMK RDI JournalLAMKpub

This article describes the business development activities carried out in The Lahti Region Outlook – Improving SME’s Skills in the Future Business Development project (NÄKY project) at Lahti University of Applied Sciences in 2016-2017. For rapid and unpredictable changes in everyday operating environment, SMEs have to navigate and renew their own businesses. The aim of the NÄKY project is to enhance SMEs skills to anticipate week signals and support SMEs to exploit signals in business development. During the project SMEs have been trained to recognise the main outlooks and exploit them in businesses development. The main partners of the project are the local Chamber, Universities and vocational institutes.

Authors: Jari Hautamäki & Jussi Eerikäinen

Background

McGuire (2002) underlines framing and mobilisation as the main development measures. According to Gibney et al. (2009, 19), framing means strategic rethinking and co-creation of things getting new shapes and crossing layers and borders. Framing filters knowledge and data flows relating to core development. To paraphrase Sotarauta et al. (2007), framing and filtering influence partners’ minds and support in finding a shared direction for focusing resources and know-how.

According to Solomon et al. (2007), customers and consumers are not only passive buyers, but are more active participants having the desire to be involved in companies’ product and service development. Arnkill et al. (2010) present that companies should undertake major transformations in their innovation processes and business models in order to deliver more valuable products and services to the market. New innovation strategies of companies often involve increasingly open business models, a greater focus on understanding latent consumer needs, and more direct involvement of users in various stages of the innovation process (Arnkil et al. 2010, 15).

The Regional Development Programme of Lahti University of Applied Sciences (Lahti University of Applied Sciences 2015) highlights the university’s mission to prepare regional, national and international business-based future knowledge. One of the main aims of the programme is to create prerequisites for exploiting future knowledge in local business development. Moreover, the Lahti Region Business Build-up Alignments 2016-2020 (Päijät-Hämeen liitto 2016a) notes that changes in business are permanent. Therefore, the role of anticipation and utilisation of changes have a great role in renewing businesses. Renewing means implementation of changes in business based on an understanding of the influences of future phenomena. Furthermore, abandon from out-of-date business practices is needed.

The Lahti Region Development Programme 2018–2021 (Päijät-Hämeen liitto 2017) shows that digitalisation and internationalisation as well the new growth sectors like circular economy, design, event management and travelling will change the business environment and competition. That creates new kinds of opportunities to generate new business ideas and renew business development processes from the point of view of future knowledge and anticipation. In addition, the programme states that the Lahti Region should utilize more universities’, vocational institutes’ and international companies’ resources and competences in renewing businesses and creating new start-ups.

Lahti Region’s Plan in Preparation for Structural Change (Päijät-Hämeen liitto 2016b) highlights specialisation and test-peds based on regional strengths and opportunities. Development processes are seen as a broad network-based collaboration, which produces new kinds of perspectives and challenges relating to regional development. Furthermore, according to Lahti Region’s educational alignments, working-life and training processes should be more overlapped for involving students in the development of companies.

Business Development Challenges

Rapid and unpredictable changes in operational environment increase challenges in SMEs’ businesses. Preparing for positive or negative changes requires companies to navigate and renew their businesses. Enhancing competitiveness will be possible in companies that underline customer-oriented development and co-learning as well as long-term anticipation. To stay at the top of development is increasingly more important and relevant. (Hautamäki et al. 2013.)

According to Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu (2016) vital SMEs themselves actively participate in the creation of future and ongoing changes. For clarification, SME’s strategies require recognition of future drivers and opportunities. Learning about the future could be promoted by anticipating in collaborative networks and by efficiently utilising the public sector’s stakeholder resources and prerequisites.

Future business will be generated as results of decisions in companies every day. Managers and staff of SMEs have to learn to recognise outlooks and new opportunities. Future knowledge enables the creation of future-oriented outlooks. Linking outlooks to companies’ business strategies enables mobilisation of development processes and innovative product and service development. (Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu 2016.)

Current SMEs’ know-how in anticipation needs to be enhanced. However, SMEs’ resources for innovative development are normally not sufficient. There are usually problems with meeting future knowledge and business development. Nevertheless, almost every SME should have innovative business inceptions and initials as well as a the capacity to recognise upcoming technology signals and market shifts over industry sectors (Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu 2017).

Anticipation could be applied and mobilised in collaboration between the public sector and private companies in an agile and practice-based way. From the point of view of collaboration, local universities and business development stakeholders should take responsibility for creating a local future business platform. By combining separated resources to the platform, the effectiveness could be increased. (Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu 2016.)

Network for mobilising development measures

The NÄKY Project (Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu 2017) and anticipation network were established. The Häme Chamber decided to work as a mediating organisation between universities, vocational institutes and chamber-member companies. The shared aim was to establish a network over the Kanta-Häme and Lahti Regions for continuing local collaboration between education and companies, together with developing new practices. One aim was to test social media applications in disseminating results and develop multi-channelling communication practices in network (Eerikäinen & Hautamäki 2017).

Figure 1. The Anticipation Network of the NÄKY Project (Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu 2017)

The aim of the project has been to create new SME-based agile development practices for recognising and visualising future trends and signals, as well as for exploiting them in SMEs’ business development. The duties of the universities have been to manage projects and create a development platform with different sorts of test-peds. The platform has been needed for testing cross-fertilization methods intended for colliding managers, experts and students of SMEs and development organisations (Eerikäinen & Hautamäki 2017).

The main aim of the project has been to create a regional operating model for enhancing SMEs’ anticipation skills and increasing companies’ capabilities and inspiration to develop and nimbly utilise the strategies of their own. For disseminating the project’s results, an externally funded national development programme and project will be prepared.

Preliminary Results of the Project

The NÄKY Future Map (figure 2) has been prepared on Trello community by experts and students working for the project. The map presents 100 main future trends and signals, which are significant from the point of business development today. The map is interactive and enables involvement in conversations relating to complementing and enriching the information included to single trends and signals. The NÄKY Future Map supports updating linked to https://trello.com/b/YUuunEwd. (Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu 2017.)

Figure 2. The NÄKY Future Map (Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu 2017)

The regional operating model for enhancing SMEs’ skills in anticipation has been tentatively modified from the Quadruple Helix model (Figure 3). The final model will contain major stakeholders, relations, encounters, test-peds, platforms and practices fostering SMEs’ roles in the business development learning process.

Figure 3. Tentatively Operating Model based on the Quadruple Helix -Model (cf. Chesbrough & Bogers 2014).

The roles of the stakeholders of the operating model have been settled. Häme Chamber’s member companies’ role have been to learn, how to recognise future trends and signals as well as how to exploit the Business Model Canvas and Lean Service Creation in combining future signals and agile everyday business development together.

Through the experiments, the local Chamber’s, universities’ and vocational institutes’ assignments have been to find new collaborative ways to anticipate, enhance anticipation skills and foster SMEs’ business development processes. The Regional Council’s assignment has been to finance development measures of the NÄKY projects, with the aim of implementing regional strategies and programs, which direct regional development resources. The aim of the students has been to network with SMEs, creating new ideas and learning development processes typical for working life.

To combine the previously mentioned stakeholders and interested parties has been based on the involvement of a development context arranged by the projects. Every party has the same development platform, even though they each have different aspirations. The Context Management contains listed events, meet-ups and workshops, such as the following:

NÄKY Kick-off Events, 24^th and 27^th of January 2017
Häme Chamber Afternoon Event for Influential Persons, 16^th of February 2017
Workshop: Building-up and Internationalisation 30^th of March 2017
Workshop: Running-up Business by Utilising Business Model Canvas, 25^th of April 2017
Workshop: How to Exploit Trends and Future Signals in Business Development, 27^th of April 2017
Workshop: Drivers of Change and alternative Outlooks, 7^th of June 2017
Workshop: How to Combine Ideas by using Agile Methods, 8^th of June 2017
Workshop: Deploying Customer Experiences in Service Development, 27^th of September 2017
Workshop: Social Media Applications in Marketing and Selling, 28^th of September 2017
Future Business Summit, 9^th of November 2017

One of the most important outcomes of the NÄKY Project will be the local, future-based business development plan. Planning is still in progress without the final report. The aim is to create a new business development project, which is meant to disseminate good practices to other Chambers and inspire to create the same kind of development activities as the NÄKY Project. Moreover, the effectiveness of the NÄKY Project activities should systematically explore and implement measures by applying universities’ RD-opportunities (Eerikäinen & Hautamäki 2017).

For marketing workshops’ contents and results through multiple channels, some social media applications have been tested. The NÄKY Map of the Future has been created by applying the Trello application. Many newsletters have been sent and released by Facebook and traditional websites. The Häme Chamber’s online newspaper has been a workable channel for disseminating good practices and case stories (Hämeen kauppakamari 2017).

Summary

The main task of the NÄKY projects is to enhance SMEs’ skills to anticipate business transformation and utilise agile methods in business development. There are many reasons for that. According to Hautamäki et al. (2012), consumption has been a target for strong fragmentation in the last years. The same customer is able to belong to many different consuming communities and behave in many different ways. Consumption behaviour will increasingly change in the future because of the fast transformation of operating environments. That’s why marketing and selling have to be based increasingly more on consumers’ lifestyles, significances, images, myths, symbols, shared values, conversations and stories as well as acquisition practices.

Future knowledge is needed for developing businesses in companies and communities. Main challenge is to filter and make visible knowledge and information, which relates to development targets. The duty of Universities of Applied Sciences is to produce knowledge, which is exploitable from the point of view of the business development of working life organisations and networks. For this reason, Lahti University of Applied Sciences and Häme University of Applied Sciences have launched the NÄKY projects with close collaboration to the Häme Chamber.

References

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Chesbrough, H., & Bogers, M. 2014. Explicating Open Innovation: Clarifying an Emerging Paradigm for Understanding Innovation. In: H. Chesbrough, W. Vanhaverbeke & J. West, J. New Frontiers in Open Innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3-28.

Eerikäinen, J. & Hautamäki, J. 2017 [Estimated]. Ennakointiosaamista pk-yrityksien liiketoiminnan kehittämiseen. Teoksessa: J. Hautamäki (ed.). LAMK aluevaikuttajana 2017. 48-52.

Gibney, J., Copeland, S., & Murie, A. 2009. Towards a “new” strategic leadership of place for the knowledge-based economy. Leadership. Vol. 5 (1), 5-23.

Hautamäki, J., & Vesasto, M. (eds.). 2013. Proactive Approach to Structural Change. A Publication of Lahti University of Applied Sciences C:134. N-Paino Oy.

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About the authors

Hautamäki, Jari, Ph.D., works as a director of regional development in Lahti University of Applied Sciences. His duties include developing collaboration between university and working-life and developing services for business organization.

Eerikäinen, Jussi, M.Sc. (Tech.), is a CEO of Häme Chamber of Commerce. Previously he has worked for Lahden Messut Oy and Yleiselektroniikka Oyj as a managing director. A wide experience in foresight activities and business strategies belong to his competences.

Article picture by Jari Hautamäki.

Published 7.12.2017

Reference to this publication

Hautamäki, J. & Eerikäinen, J. 2017. How to Recognise and Exploit Outlooks in SME Level. LAMK RDI Journal. [Electronic journal]. [Cited and date of citation]. Available at:
http://www.lamkpub.fi/2017/12/07/how-to-recognise-and-exploit-outlooks-in-sme-level/