Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2010 | Page 23

Photos: Janne Lehtinen

collaborating with – be it design or something else.
“There is a global trend that companies tend to go where the good universities
are. We welcome also international companies to work with us.”

Mastering Media

“In the future, we might add new Factories as need arises. On the other hand, we
can also discontinue Factories if we want.”
The workshops support international
principles, open innovation and an over-all
interdisciplinary attitude. The objective is
that the research information will be seamlessly transferred into teaching.
“The key here is to provide a truly multi-dimensional package. There is cooperation within the university and with outside
parties in an unprecedented way,” Teeri says,
adding that the Factories differ from regular
joint research projects in their extremely diverse and flexible nature.
“The Factory concept is very important
to us and we want to keep developing it.”

Banking on Innovation
Of course, the new President knows that you
need something special to differentiate from
the competition. Lots of universities have
convincing research and teaching activities,
but Aalto University wants to take this one
step further. Aalto is striving to be a genuine innovation university where the best ideas and best talent come together to the tune
of ringing cash registers.
After all, the research here is geared
towards commercial application in one way
or another – not every idea needs to generate massive cash flow, but the mindset is
still more entrepreneurial than one is used
to seeing in Finnish academia.
According to their initial roles, the Design Factory concentrates on product development, Media Factory focuses on media
and Service Factory on services that produce
higher added value. Teeri says that many

companies have embraced the opportunity
to work with the Factories:
“We’ve had a lot of companies involved
in the Factory projects. The best part about
their involvement is that the companies are
really active participants in the projects,
not just sources of funding,” Teeri says, describing fruitful collaborations where students and corporate professionals both get
a hands-on feel of the process.

All-You-Can-Design
According to Teeri, the Design Factory is
probably the clearest example of the new
approach.
Interdisciplinary teaching and networking are important forces in all Factories, but Design Factory may have succeeded in creating the most relaxed atmosphere
when it comes to limits and boundaries.
“Anyone can walk into the Design Factory with a project and see what happens.”
While most universities utilise the traditional give-and-take teaching method, the
Design Factory seeks to facilitate learning
by creating situations, networks and opportunities that are inspirational to learning.
Combining the teaching of technical
disciplines, economics, and art should help
create powerful design. In order to produce
innovations, the Design Factory must operate in all the quadrants of learning at the
same time and create a system that allows for
specialisation but also improves the understanding of synthesis practices. This is the
way, after all, that innovations have emerged
in such companies as Nokia, Apple or Kone.
Tuula Teeri notes that it’s not only the
Finnish companies that Aalto is interested in

The Media Factory is an open network with a
goal to identify new interesting areas of media research, launch joint research projects
and look into possibilities for collaboration
in teaching. The key areas for the Media Factory are media technologies, media production and management and media concepts
and communications behaviour.
The Media Factory encompasses the
entire communication and material chain of
the media, starting with the raw materials.
The chain features research of media production and media technologies, formation
of media content and messages, the creation
of media concepts, the reception of messages, media consumption and, ultimately, the
behaviour of media consumers.
The Factory wants to become worldfamous for its knack to bridge the arts, technology and business. One of the key objectives is to recognise, support and utilise the
diverse media-related competencies in Aalto University.

Smart Service
Service Factory identifies new areas of service research, carries out collaborative research through the use of thematic and networked projects and provides a framework
for collaboration in teaching. It strives to
make new research discoveries and to be at
the forefront of service research, develop
education on services and contribute to the
creation of service innovations.
Topical themes and areas of expertise
include Service innovation and management, Service design and experience, Service systems and infrastructure and Service
engineering and metrics.
The ideology behind this Factory observes that the shift from product-dominant
to service-dominant activities turns the attention towards service processes and contexts. The transformation of traditional manufacturing industries into service businesses calls for fresh thinking.

School’s In
While the Factories are already in full swing,
Tuula Teeri and her staff have plenty of other things to do before the school officially
opens its doors next year.
“We’re still building the organisation,
but bit by bit the work is becoming more
‘normal’,” she says.
“There are a lot of issues to deal with,
but we also have a lot of ideas and want to
do this the right way.” b
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