Hanken_Newsletter_2_2015

Education and research are the two core areas for universities, no arguments there. Equally important is a third core area, namely the interaction with society and business life. At Hanken we collaborate and engage with business and society in several ways. Through our executive education we directly engage with many important stakeholders. We engage a broad spectrum of companies and organisations by offering everything from the Hanken Executive MBA programme, tailored and inhouse programmes to more regionally focused courses. We interact with everyone, from SME’s in the Ostrobothnia region catered for by Hanken Executive Education in Vaasa (HFV) to multinationals participating in Hanken & SSE programmes. For our academics these different types of interaction through seminars, short courses and longer programmes with companies and society at large are vital. Firstly, they provide a platform to disseminate our newest research findings. Secondly, they offer an opportunity to gain new insights and get a practitioner’s view on our research, something we all find very rewarding. Recently we had the opportunity to host one such event here in Vaasa. During Energy Week, the main event for the large energy cluster in Vaasa, we co-arranged a so-called Sales Café with around 90 managers from companies like Wärtsilä, ABB and Vacon. The keynote speaker Jonas Kjellberg, creator of SKYPE, gave an incredibly interesting lecture on the interaction between sales and product development - collaboration between academia and the corporate world at its best