Aalto Global Impact Review

Bringing people togetherAalto Global Impact promotes and facilitates Aalto University’s research and educational programmes for societal impact globally. We are actively orienting innovation towards long-term societal needs. Our aim is to support Aalto University’s mission to change the world for a better place.

WHAT WE DO• Support multidisciplinary action research in

emerging markets• Build students’ capabilities through interactive

real-life learning environments• Promote social entrepreneurship and

responsible global leadership• Create new global alliances for societal impact

WHO WE ARE• Teija Lehtonen, Director• Anne Badan, Strategy and Partnership Manager• Riina Subra, Foresight and Advocacy Manager• Roope Kiviranta, Designer• Sujil Kodathoor, Designer (until Dec 2013)• Emilia Saarelainen, Project Specialist

(until Dec 2013)• Andy Clutterbuck, Coach and Community

Manager (until May 2013)• Rahim Saatov, Resource Mobilisation Manager

(until May 2013)

STEERING GROUP• Minna Halme, Professor, School of Business• Matti Hämäläinen, Professor, School of Science• Pekka Korvenmaa, Professor, Vice-Dean, School

of Arts, Design and Architecture• Olli Varis, Professor, School of Engineering

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REACHING OUR GOALSAalto Global Impact has been created to support Aalto University’s societal mission for making the world a better place. It has been recognised that within Aalto community, there already exists a number of people, projects and practices, working both internationally and in Finland with complex societal challenges.

Our aim has been to bring together the already existing partners working on societal issues and further support them to develop their activities. This review presents a few examples of the work of professors, researchers, teachers and students working in the field of societal impact. It also high-lights some cases in the fields of multidisciplinary action research, teaching in interactive real-life learning environments and promoting responsi-ble global leadership. In the end of each section we provide our observations, lessons learnt and rec-ommendations for future activities.

Aalto Global Impact has been intensively involved in the creation of the New Global research project designed together with six faculties and four Aalto Schools: Business, Science, Engineer-ing, and Arts, Design and Architecture. The aim of the project is to explore future strategic themes and directions for the Finnish economy and link research with education and practical innovation

work in emerging markets. It involves creating a global network on frugal and reverse innovation experimentation sites engaging multiple stake-holders.

New learning environments have been fostered together with already existing courses and pro-grammes within Aalto University, such as Creative Sustainability, International Design Business Management and Product Development Project. Students have had opportunities to work with real-life cases in countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Uganda, Mozambique, Tanza-nia and South Africa. This practical approach often provides effective ways of building students’ capa-bilities and their understanding of global societal issues.

New global alliances to support multidisci- plinary research and educational activities at Aalto University have been established by Aalto Global Impact, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin Ame-rica. Aalto Global Impact has also made visible societal responsibility work of Aalto University and its partners, and thus contributed in profiling the university as one of the global leaders in this field.

A warm thank you to all people who have contributed to Aalto Global Impact’s initiatives.

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Peter Lund is a Professor at Department of Applied Physics at Aalto University School of Science. His areas of specialisa-tion include new and renewable

energy systems and technologies, energy and innovation as well as

sustainable energy policy. He is also a leader of the New Energy Technologies Group, which current research themes include urban energy systems, solar and fuel cells, and nanotechnology for energy applications.

“Solving global energy problems requires new kinds of thinking. We can’t see technology as an isolated area. We need to look into economy, social issues and sometimes even education and health. Also the role of the consumer needs to be recon- sidered. The world as we used to know it, has fun-damentally changed.”

“Governmental institutions are sometimes quite conservative in their approach to energy issues. They can also be poorly functioning and even corrupted. I believe that in the future innovations will be more often developed on the grass root level and people will be using local and cheaper resour-ces and technologies at hand”, predicts Peter Lund.

Acting responsiblyBy 2040, it is estimated that 80% of the world energy production and consumption will move into urban areas.

“People in low-income markets who earn less than a few dollars a day want the same basic

commodities as we do. At the same time global resources are rapidly diminishing. Producers and service providers who want to satisfy the needs of the global poor need to be able to get more out of less. That puts a lot of pressure on innovations.“

“It is clear that the World 2.0 is being created and it will happen in China, India, Latin America and Africa. Finland, on the other hand, has been quite conservative in its approach to globalisation issues. My question is: can we afford to be left out of this development?”

“It is also a question of justice. For example the industrial production outsourced to China from Western countries stands for a significant part of China’s emissions. We are therefore also (in)directly responsible.”

New opportunities Peter Lund with his research group is collaborating among others with social and policy science researchers at Colombia University in New York. Together they are developing a distributed local energy system model for poor people in India. Besides developing the technology they are taking into consideration the prevailing economical situation and social issues.

“I think that at Aalto University there is great potentials for international and multidis-ciplinary research projects. For our students and researches, they offer a good way to see what’s going on in the world and get closer to the really big questions where both science and business could play a role.”

AGI GOAL 1: Support multidisciplinary action research in emerging markets

INNOVATIONS FOR THE NEW WORLD

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CASE EXAMPLE

The New Global – co-creating frugal and reverse innovation in complex global systems

Aalto Global Impact initiated and supported the creation of a new multidisciplinary research application process for Tekes Big Strategic Openings funding. The New Global project is about action research. The action involves creating a global network on frugal and reverse innovation experimentation sites engaging multiple stake-holders. The research involves guiding and study-ing these processes as they are happening.

Key professors and researchers involved in this project are Minna Halme (School of Business), Teija Lehtonen (Aalto Global Impact), Sara Lindeman (Hanken School of Economics), Peter Lund (School of Science), Susu Nousala (School of Arts, Design and Architecture), Helena Sand-man (School of Arts, Design and Architecture), Henri Simula (School of Science) and Olli Varis (School of Engineering).

For Finnish companies today it is hard to grasp and challenging to do multi-stakeholder, multi-sec-torial systemic innovations in remote places such as urban slums in Africa or India. The following key challenges for companies to succeed in emerging markets are identified: lack of knowledge and experience about business opportunities in low-income markets, finding reliable partners in various phases of innovation and business development, slow and inadequate piloting, testing and prototyping with actual user groups and potential customers and partners, working in silos instead of multidisciplinary and multi-stake-holder groups and networks. The New Global pro-ject will provide on-the-ground experimentation, through well-established partnerships and net-works, in a growing number of emerging markets including India, Tanzania, Mexico and Sri Lanka.

KEY INSIGHTS & RECOMMENDATIONS

• Linking multidisciplinary action research with education and practical innovation work with Finnish enterprises and other key stakeholders is a new approach in the academic context.

• Potential benefits of research projects in this field may include:

• Partnerships that create concrete research opportunities are well aligned with the goals of faculty and enhance the impact of research through built-in knowledge transfer mecha-nisms

• Collaborative, international research pro-jects provide excellent professional learning opportunities for students

• Pioneering projects contribute to a change of mind-set within Finnish enterprises and partner organisations

• Projects also contribute to local beneficia- ries, leading to new knowledge creation for communities

• The development of research projects in com-plex partnerships requires strong support from Aalto University research application pro-cesses in order to facilitate multidisciplinary collaboration between different faculties and schools.

Recommendations:• Academic Incentives need to be clarified and

recognised to encourage multidisciplinary research work.

• The value of collaborative actions resulting in societal impact needs to be better tracked and reflected in academic KPIs.

• Research outcomes need to be enhanced and better shared within Aalto community and its global networks.

• Finnish companies’ interests and involvement in communities can in some cases become a risk and provoke unintended consequences. Part of the emphasis of these research projects is to anticipate and analyse the consequences of the projects within the societal context they are evolving in.

• The aims and expectations of research pro-jects must be communicated well, with a good understanding of the dynamics in participat-ing communities – otherwise action research projects can generate community expectations that cannot be fully met and lower the value and impact of the research outcomes.

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Nina Martin is a Master student in new media at Aalto School of Arts, Design and Architecture. She was born and raised in East Germany (East-Berlin). She

started her academic curriculum by studying film and special effects

in England and came to Aalto University to com-plete her studies in new media.

While studying at Aalto University, Nina has become increasingly interested in design thinking, participatory working methods and the Living Lab concept. She has realised that community-based innovation and social impact are something that she wants to learn more about. Courses like Design for Extreme Affordability and programmes like International Design Business Management have been her primary sources of inspiration.

“When I came to Aalto University I was intro-duced to design thinking and design processes. Soon I realised that this was the direction where I wanted to go to. I also became familiar with the concept of social entrepreneurship. Right now I’m planning to launch a company based on a social entrepreneurship model together with my busi-ness partners in Beirut.”

“Students who are interested in social impact find it quite challenging to get information about all the available courses at Aalto University.

Different courses are often quite scattered within various schools and departments and even teach-ers are not necessarily aware of similar studies being run by other departments as well. I some-times found people at Aalto Global Impact very helpful when navigating between different schools. I think that there is a need for a joint information platform where students can get support and tutoring when planning their studies on social impact. After all it is quite a new area in the academic field”, says Nina.

Challenging yourself by travellingCourses teaching social impact often include field trips to developing countries in emerging markets. Nina has participated in field trips to Lebanon, Mexico and South Africa.

“I’ve been surprised to notice that almost all participating students have had other nationalities than Finnish. I wonder if foreign students are more ready to move outside of their comfort zone than Finns are. I wish that more emphasis would be put on preparing the students in advance. The cultural differences between students coming from the Western world and the people they are meeting in developing countries are huge. It requires a particu-lar kind of a mind set to be able to cross the cultural boundaries, otherwise the communication fails miserably.”

AGI GOAL 2: Build students’ capabilities through interactive real-life learning environments

INSPIRED BY DESIGN, COMMUNITY WORK AND SOCIAL IMPACT

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Empowering communitiesAs a continuation of her experiences and studies Nina has started to work as a study project manager for a course at the department of Media. In the framework of a course called New Media for the Third Sector initially designed by Teemu Leinonen and Andrea Botero in 2007, she has launched her own Helsinki-Beirut study project. It will take her and her business partner along with 8-10 students to Beirut, Lebanon in spring 2014.

The study project deals with the role of design and social media tools and services and how to increase effectiveness of activities and communi-cation of third sector organisations. The course is open for all Aalto students and is funded by Media Factory. The collaborating partners in Beirut include MENA Design Research Center, AltCity and Lamba Labs Beirut Hackerspace.

At the same time, Nina is working on her the-sis, which is again a social innovation project with a very hands-on attitude. This time, Nina has been building a mobile bus concept for communi-ties in South Africa. The mobile bus will function as a platform for cross-community communica-tion and sharing ideas and resources. Nina’s pro-ject is accepted as part of the official World Design Capital programme 2014 in Cape Town and it is financed by Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The project was supported by Aalto Global Impact.

“I believe in learning by doing and building theory while on the field. I feel that conceptual theories developed behind the desk often don’t work. Based on my personal experiences, I have developed three key principles: the first is to remember not to get offended when finding it hard to communicate, the second is to try to understand the context of the other people you’re working with and the third is to remember to be empathetic. The last principle is particularly important when work-ing in countries and communities which language nor culture you’re not previously familiar with”, concludes Nina.

CASE EXAMPLES

Aalto Global Impact has been involved in the following real-life learning projects:• International Design Business Management

Masters Programme• New Product Development Project (PDP)

course • Creative Sustainability Masters Programme:

• City in Transition, Aalto School of Arts, Design and Architecture

• Sustainable Global Technologies, Aalto School of Engineering

• How to Change the World, Aalto School of Business

• Aalto Lab Mexico, Aalto School of Arts, Design and Architecture

• Aalto Global Impact Challenge Course

KEY INSIGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• Building students’ capabilities through inter-active real-life learning environments has clear benefits for the various stakeholders involved:

• For students: projects can offer a transform-ative experience through real-life learning environments and can open up new career tracks. Involved students often become active change agents, bringing back and sha-ring knowledge within the Aalto student community. In addition, international real-life educational projects provide a prac-tical and effective way of building the global competence of students (learning by doing).

• For the communities: teachers and students are sharing current knowledge from the aca-demic community (testing/experimenting and applying current knowledge).

• For the companies and partner organisa-tions: it is a cost effective way of involving students but also a reciprocal way of ensuring sustainability.

Recommendations• It is important to seek and build longer-term

partnerships as students’ involvement in pro-jects usually last for one academic year only.

• Aalto University’s funding mechanisms could better support the creation of student real-life learning environments in international multi-disciplinary projects – securing the required travel funding is currently not taking place in a cost effective way.

• Students are usually engaged with commu-nities for only a short period of time and with limited training and field experience. It can raise high community expectations, which might lead to misunderstandings, conflicts, even security risks for students. The Uni-versity, the course coordinators and aca-demic staff involved, have the responsibility to mitigate these risks in order to avoid the unintended consequences of doing harm by wanting to do good.

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Aalto Global Impact together with the World Bank ICT Sector Unit, infoDev, and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland piloted a series of workshops

aiming at supporting new pers- pectives in developing innova-

tion policies. Two workshops were organised in Helsinki, Finland in 2012 (Innovation Policy for ICT), and one workshop in Dar Es Salaam, Tanza-nia in 2013 (Front-End Innovation in Projects).

The overall objective of the training work-shops was to develop the learning of participating decision-makers on strategic innovation in the field of ICT, in a multidisciplinary and multi-cul-tural setting. The approach of the workshops was to engage the decision-makers in a hands-on, par-ticipatory and real-life case study analysis, also involving prototyping and testing of concepts, business models and service designs.

The workshops were designed and facilitated by Professor Mikko Koria from Aalto University School of Business and included contributions from speakers from different Finnish organi-sations. Designing and organising the training

workshops required close collaboration and know-ledge exchange between the parties. The World Bank ICT Unit worked closely with Aalto Univer-sity in designing the training format and the overall programme and, thus, contributing to the success of the pilot programmes.

Results for the partner organisations According to Ilari Lindy, Senior Operations Officer from the World Bank Institute, the initia-tive has been very well received inside the World Bank and different actors in the organisation have expressed interest in the training workshops. Collaborative designing, i.e. where projects are designed together with partners and where new methods are being applied, is relatively new to the World Bank.

The pilot initiative has been a positive learn-ing experience and considered successful, which prompted two follow-ups. Firstly, infoDev inte-grated the training workshops in its Entrepreneur-ships Programme for Innovation in the Caribbean (EPIC). Aalto Global Impact together with infoDev organised another training workshop in Helsinki in October 2013 and the second workshop in the same

GOAL 3: Promote social entrepreneurship and responsible global leadership

TRAINING FOR ICT INNOVATION POLICY AND ECOSYSTEM DEVELOPMENT

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series took place in Trinidad & Tobago in Decem-ber 2013. Secondly, modules and the execution models of the training workshops were replicated; the World Bank ICT Sector Unit together with ESADE Business School organised a workshop on city and urban innovation in Barcelona.

Results for communities/beneficiariesThe overall feedback on all training workshops was very good. The following comments from partici-pants highlight the impact of the training:• “Ecosystem (concept) was an eye opener for me”• “Teamwork on prototyping and business mod-

elling were very insightful”• “An impactful and transformative course”

However, how the participants will apply the learn-ing cannot be fully seen at this stage. The expec- tation is that key learning outcomes will contribute to better linkages between policy and practice. So far, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda have expressed an interest in replicating (and localising) the training workshop in their country.

CASE EXAMPLES

Aalto Global Impact has been involved in promo- ting social entrepreneurship and responsible global leadership through organising training and events, such as:• ICT Innovation Policy and Ecosystem Deve-

lopment training programmes with the World Bank Group

• Weconomy Start innovation programme with World Vision Finland and Finpro

• Inclusive Business Management Executive course with European BOP Learning Labs network

• “Co-creating Sustainable Opportunities on Global Scale” event at the Masters of Aalto

• “Impact Hour” event with Demos Helsinki• Connecting Ideas with Sustainable

Entrepreneurship event with Think Africa• “Networked Innovation – Entrepreneurship

for a Better Future” event with Lee Bryant• “Companies and NGOs – from Greenwashing

to Innovations?” with UNICEF Finland• Junior Programme Office (JPO) event with

United Nation Development Programme (UNDP)

KEY INSIGHTS & RECOMMENDATIONS

• There is a need to support entrepreneurs/start-ups with societal impact goals within Aalto University’s community.

• There is a recognised wish not to separate/ dichotomise social entrepreneurship from current growth entrepreneurship trends.

• Building global competencies by applying learning from research and educational activities are crucial to solve global challenges.

Recommendations • We should continue to advocate and bring

together like-minded people. We should enhance existing synergies and improve communication in existing fragmented communities.

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UNICEF Finland and Aalto Uni-versity started a collaboration with UNICEF Uganda and the University of Makerere in 2010, aiming at developing innovative

solutions for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) problems

through the work of multidisciplinary student teams in Northern Uganda.

The pilot projects involved the Aalto Product Development Project (PDP) course and the Inter-national Design Business Management (IDBM) programme. These pilots demonstrated that stu-dent teams are capable of developing innovative product prototypes with their open and out-of-the-box way of thinking. However, the scope of isolated one year long academic projects was not seen as sufficient to provide the necessary support, skills and mentoring required for students to make the most out of the challenging local conditions in Uganda. Nor was it ensuring that the results of stu-dent projects will be carried on locally and lead to longer-term societal impact.

“We need to recognise that we raise expec- tations in the communities in which academia students carry out their work and our actions have consequences. Our duty is to ensure that no harm is done throughout the processes. Together, we can

build a new culture of doing development aid and achieve results that we could not achieve alone. This, however, requires that we all critically ana-lyse our own way of doing business and are willing to change practices and learn new things from each other”, says Annika Launiala, Head of Interna-tional Advocacy at UNICEF Finland.

In order to provide such a solid foundation for future student initiatives, UNICEF Finland, Aalto University, Makerere University, Helsinki Uni-versity’s Department of Anthropology, UNICEF Uganda and Biolan Ltd. decided to build a partner-ship that would bring together the respective par-ties. It offers a multi-year framework for activities to yield expected results, and engage all partners in a collaboration that draws on the unique knowl-edge and skills of each organisation. The ambitious collaboration aims at taking student innovation activities to the next level – linking them directly to local knowledge and to organisations capable of carrying out the results to achieve real impact.

“Collaboration with multiple partners, which have diverse expertise outside of the conventional development aid scope, is challenging but also very inspiring and rewarding”, notes Launiala.

“There are multiple important issues involved in building innovative partnerships. First of all, we need to build a common understanding and a com-

GOAL 4: Create new global alliances for societal impact

DEVELOPING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR WATER, SANITATION AND HYGIENE

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mon goal for the partnership – at the end of the day, this partnership has to provide tangible benefits to the Ugandan children. Secondly these benefits have to be needs and human rights-based, sustain-able and environmentally sound. Thirdly, the inno-vation work has to be developed to support the UNICEF programme work, as well as the priori-ties set by Ugandan government in order to yield sustainable solutions”, says Launiala, who has led the partnership development process on behalf of UNICEF Finland in this second phase of the col-laboration.

The next phase of the collaboration is intended to develop a full-scale human rights-based UNICEF-Academia-Private Sector innovation model to address WASH-related problems in rural Uganda. Such an innovation model is, even on an international level, a pioneering example of the emerging new development aid culture that seeks to add value through equal partnerships between development organisations, academia and the private sector.

The knowledge transfer and learning pro-cess among the partners and the local commu-nity beneficiaries help build a human rights-based innovative mind set, in which all those involved recognise that on their own their achievements would remain limited. But together it is possible to achieve ground-breaking results that have a direct positive impact on the lives of Ugandan children.

CASE EXAMPLES

Aalto Global Impact has developed networks and alliances with:• UNICEF Finland, Uganda and New York• Global BOP Learning Labs in 20 countries• Weconomy with World Vision Finland and

Finpro• UNIPID Network of 10 Finnish Universities

for International Development• The World Bank Group • Other universities like TU Delft in Nether-

lands, Cape Peninsula University of Techno- logy in South Africa, Makerere University in Uganda, University of Dar es Salaam in Tan-zania, Tech de Monterrey in Mexico and KTH Royal University of Technology in Sweden

KEY INSIGHTS & RECOMMENDATIONS

• Alliances allow professors, teachers and researchers to access the platforms of net-

works without having the responsibility to build and maintain them beyond the immedi-ate projects they are involved in.

• They allow peer-learning and sharing of les-sons learnt and best practices, both related to project contents and to management activi-ties.

• Global alliances bring opportunities to explore new projects and scale up existing ones.

• They gradually build understanding and trust between stakeholders, and increase manage- ment and organisational learning within Aalto University.

• The synergies and collaboration with Aalto Global Impact’s dedicated partners support the development of mechanisms for data col-lection and feedback, which in turn contri- bute to deeper impact measurement analyses (Flux 3D, OIP).

• Multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder alli-ances strongly increase the visibility of Aalto University’s societal mission towards enter-prises, ministries, civil society organisations, international organisations, as well as other universities. They also positions Aalto Uni-versity as a frontrunner in the field of societal impact.

Recommendations• The full endorsement and commitment of the

university is required in order to continue building long term key global alliances for societal impact.

A TOOL FOR MEASURING USER EXPERIENCE: FLUX 3DFLUX 3D is a concept developed by Futurlab at the University of Alicante. It is a tool that allows to col-lect and compare information about user experi-ence related to various kinds of products, concepts and innovations.

The deployment of the tool to potential users requires its development in a web-based format or mobile software. Futurlab and Aalto Global Impact are partnering to develop a web-based prototype of the tool, in order to further test and validate the methodology with Aalto’s flagship multi-discipli-nary courses in industry collaborations.

Main features of FLUX 3D are:• A highly flexible survey method based on a

fractal data structure in 3 levels: 3 dimensions, 9 indicators, 27 variables measured through client responses to 27 questions on a Likert scale. Data gathering is simple, yet allows mul-tiple and advanced comparisons, and an easy to understand data visualisation in 3D (cubes).

• It offers a generic approach with customisation options that fit any question or context related to user experience. It can be used to evaluate and compare products, prototypes, services or processes and to differentiate between market segments.

• The interface is simple enough for individual and recreational use – yet the underlying methodology is potent enough for demanding professional and business use.

• It allows to build longer-term data banks and opportunities to share this data between users through add-on services.

• The data gathered is relevant, thorough and systematic – yet the process is simple, intu-itively compelling, and requires no previous skills from the user. Evaluation results are displayed instantly through visuals – yet are also stored in larger databases allowing for advanced analyses.

Testing of the FLUX 3D prototype will be rolled out in Aalto University during the 2014 spring term.

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Design and layout: Sujil Kodathoor/Roope KivirantaText: Teija Lehtonen, Riina Subra, Emilia Saarelainen, Anne Badan, Anna VarakasPhotography: Nina Martin, Jan Ahlstedt, Sujil Kodathoor, Mia Halme, Sara Lindeman, Irena Bakic, Andrew Clutterbuck and Panu HarjuPrinted by: UnigrafiaPublisher: Aalto Global Impact (December 2013)

Teija Lehtonen

Riina Subra

RoopeKiviranta

Anne Badan

Sujil Kodathoor

Emilia Saarelainen

The AGI Team