Industry, education development, and research projects
2023-2026: “Strengthening DEI in Education and SME Management” (DEI4SME)
Project number 2023-1-FI01-KA220-HED-000166837. (400 000 EUR/ 122 500 EUR)
Leading DEI4SME – an Erasmus+ project co-funded by the European Union, uniting six partner organisations from Finland, Germany, Austria, and Lithuania for the mission to enable DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in business and business education.
Project main goals:
- Creating digital infrastructure for Higher Education Institutions to develop graduates’ skills needed to lead change toward social responsibility in SMEs.
- Developing a digital tool to plan, implement, and report measurable DEI activities in line with the ESG requirements in the EU for SMEs.
- Supporting employment of multiple underrepresented groups, especially students with diverse backgrounds, because SMEs will develop competencies in and awareness of the DEI management.
Read more: https://dei4sme.eu/
The some of the most valuable outcomes that we created in the project included:
- International hackathon – recognized by UN Global Compact & PRME
- Three collections of cases on DEI and social sustainability in SMEs (two books and online repository)
- A digital tool for social sustainability management in SMEs
(400 000 EUR in total, out of which 122 500 EUR granted for the University of Vaasa) granted by ERASMUS+ (The EU project within the KA220-HED – Cooperation partnerships in higher education).
I was leading this project in which University of Vaasa was in the consortium among Kaunas University of Technology (Lithuania), IHK- PROJEKTGESELLSCHAFT MBH (Germany), Wirtschaftskammer Steiermark (Austria), OY Merinova AB (Finland), and E.N.T.E.R. GMBH (Austria).
2023-2026: “Education for sustainable internationalization of a firm with the TFK2023”
I was leading this project for developing the Double Degree and other collaborations between the University of Vaasa, Finland, and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), Peru. 59 200 EUR granted by TFK 2023, Team Finland Knowledge programme, Finnish National Agency of Education.
The project results were:
- We created the first in Finland transatlantic double degree in business at the level of bachelor’s studies (read more).
- We developed and continuously running a joint course with the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) between Finland and Peru that involves students working with international firm that is an international leader in circularity,
- We designed and implemented two study abroad trips (Finland to Peru, Peru to Finland) for students and faculty,
- And established strong research and education ties between these two institutions. Read reflections from the project here: https://blogs.uwasa.fi/tfk2023atunivaasa/
2021 – 2022: “Digital solutions for strategy implementation”
(14 000 EUR).
I was leading this research project. Grant for post-doctoral studies, Dr.h.c. Marcus Wallenberg Foundation, Finland
Project Objectives:
- to investigate industry of emerging digital solutions for strategy implementation (SI) in Finland and abroad;
- to reveal how industry of SI apps emerging in Finland could become competitive internationally;
- to uncover challenges of adopting digital SI solutions and design process via which companies could benefit most from cloud applications for SI;
- to design suggestions how Finnish companies could strengthen their competitive advantage by adopting digital SI solutions that are built upon well-established execution methods, such as Hoshin Kanri.
