Art of Business Creation -- a bold academic solution to the growth enterprise shortage -- was introduced in Helsinki on November 23, 2010

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Art of Business Creation -- a bold academic solution to the growth enterprise shortage -- was introduced in Helsinki on November 23, 2010

Global Venture Lab Finland, established by scholars of the University Alliance Finland, expands. The ever stronger GVL Finland offers a new domain of knowing – and knowledgists – as solution to the chronic growth enterprise shortage. Art of Business Creation – research that produces growth enterprises – was introduced at the Taloussanomat Seminar of the Tekes Liito Program in Helsinki on 23 November.

As reported at the 2nd annual meeting of the Global Venture Lab Network, in Berkeley, California, on 17 November, GVL Finland expands nation-wide. The University of Jyväskylä, the Tampere University of Technology and the University of Tampere – jointly referred to as University Alliance Finland – are joined by the Aalto University, the Abo Akademi University, the Lappeenranta University of Technology and the University of Oulu to strengthen GVL Finland, a founding member of the GVL Network.

GVL action started as American-Finnish-Indian cooperation in 2007. In 2008-2009, GVL operations were kicked off in Finland, India and the USA, and University Alliance Finland chose GVL as one of its arrowhead ventures. In November 2009, GVL Network was formally launched as a community of 26 university members worldwide. Along with the Finnish universities, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur and the University of California at Berkeley have been represented since the beginning.

Art of Business Creation, research that produces growth enterprises

- Classically, in Science of Business Administration, enterprises are investigated from the outside, via interviews, surveys, and statistical analyses. In Art of Business Creation, coined by GVL Finland, enterprising is investigated from within by participating in their creation as part of the entrepreneurial team, for example, in the role of a knowledge investor, explains Professor Marko Seppä from University of Jyväskylä.
- There is research that produces new materials, devices and medicines, even symphonies. Research on growth enterprises has classically produced less concrete outcomes, Seppä concludes

- If growth enterprises are wanted as research outcomes, there are no shortcuts. Swimming instructors should be able to swim, in this sport also, and the swimming schools should be located by the water, insists Mikko Reinikainen, partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC, GVL Finland’s corporate partner.

- Science of Business Administration aims at generalization and repeatability, whereas Art of Business Creation aims at the opposite: uniqueness. In the former you interview champions to understand their actions, in the latter you participate in the creation, because you are a champion yourself, underscores Christian Aspegrén, a global co-creator and PhD candidate at the University of Jyväskylä.

GVL Finland prepares for a nation-wide pilot of a shared, distributed, globally scalable production environment for the new domain of knowing. The work is largely based on the University Alliance Finland’s original Global Venture Lab work and experiences of the Aalto University’s Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship (ACE).

- This is a bold idea. We are in bed with game-changers. In addition, the risk - reward prospects are at the right place. The Aalto University wants to become strongly engaged here, declares Will Cardwell, Head of ACE. Pre-study funding has been applied for from Finland’s Ministry of Employment and the Economy.

Professor Dhrubes Biswas and team winners of the Metso Award

At the Taloussanomat Seminar, the winner of the First Global Academic Cup held in conjunction of the tenth EBRF conference was officially declared. The first prize became named Metso Award in the honour of EBRF history’s Most Valuable Corporate Partner, Metso Corporation. The 10 000 euro award was granted to the IIT Kharagpur’s Professor Dhrubes Biswas and his team for the funding of their project initiative "Scalable Healthcare: Low-Cost Scalable Healthcare through Social Entrepreneurship for Rural and Non-Metro Cities of India".

EBRF is Finland’s oldest international peer-reviewed business research conference, established as a joint venture of the Tampere University of Technology and the University of Tampere in 2001. The tenth anniversary event was organized by GVL Finland with Co-Creation as the main conference theme. Global Academic Cup was launched to steer research plans towards “winning business plans”. Full innovation value – rather than mere invention value – was strongly addressed.

Merie Joseph, project manager and PhD Candidate at University of Jyväskylä was happy for her friends to win the Metso Award in front of an independent jury.
- The Health Kiosk venture spearheaded by Professor Biswas is a perfect example of a GVL Live Case. A problem worth solving is being addressed by means of enterprise co-creation. From the get-go, one must be willing and able to produce value networks linking social and for-profit enterprises in forms and ways that require entrepreneurial contributions also from all researchers, Joseph describes.

Call for academic business creators to become knowledge investors

Global Faculty Partners for Problems Worth Solving LP Ky – a new global knowledge investment company for part-time partner involvement – is being formed as the “base community of knowledgists” of the globally shared production environment for Art of Business Creation envisioned by GVL Finland.

Marko Seppä, founding chairman, calls all academic business creators to become knowledge investors and join each other as partners of the new global company.
- Owner responsibility of success is indivisible, denotes Seppä, who is one of the co-founders of Global Venture Lab and Director of GVL Finland
- But luckily ownership can be divided, Seppä underscores.

The objective of GVL Finland is to have 100 universities committed to the shared environment and the new domain of knowing by 2012.

Further information:

Email: marko.seppa(at)econ.jyu.fi