Pamela Spokes
Specialist, Metropolia UAS
Pamela Spokes
Specialist, Metropolia UAS
Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI Unit and, specifically, in the Entrepreneurship team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university administration focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. Pamela is interested in promoting purposefully designed services and experiences that are centred on the user. Don’t be surprised if she knocks on your door or emails you to talk about learning co-creation methods through intensive learning experiences. She also teaches Service Design in different degree programmes and Entrepreneurship in the Turbiini Pre-Incubator programme.
PeopleFinder profile
Author's publications
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Pamela Spokes
U!REKA Change Agents engage students in challenge-based learning to develop skills for innovation
The future requires different skills than what previous generations have focused on. Challenge-based learning (CBL) has come out of these needs to equip students better for the future. U!REKA Change Agents programme is the European model for CBL. The 2025 edition of U!REKA Change Agents course was held in Helsinki.
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Pamela Spokes
Why things can feel harder than they should
Friction is invisible to those who create it. Most services are designed for the organisation that built them — shaped by internal politics, legacy systems, and the blind spots of experts who have long forgotten what it feels like not to know. They can leave you feeling confused, defeated, or exhausted but you are not the problem.
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Pamela Spokes
The design is the event – why what happens before an innovation challenge matters most
In the context of innovation challenges, the theory of challenge-based learning is well-established. What is less well-documented is the practical design intelligence required to build a successful event. This article tells you how to do it.
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Pamela Spokes
Campus to company: Why Finland should encourage student entrepreneurship
Finland has navigated economic transformation before: after gaining independence, after the Second World War, and during the recession of the 1990s. Today another transition may be underway as artificial intelligence begins to re-shape many entry-level jobs and jobs that include a lot of repetition.
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Pamela Spokes
From quick fixes to lasting change: teaching service design to future healthcare leaders
Long before a patient ever meets a healthcare professional, they have already navigated a web of services like appointment letter, directions, parking, and signage. When those services fail, the consequences can ripple through the system. Teaching healthcare professionals to ask better questions, not just find faster fixes, is where long-term change begins.
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Pamela Spokes
The myth of the eureka moment – why innovation isn’t about sudden genius
The stereotypical depiction of a person engaged in creating something new usually plays out with a 'eureka' moment. The proverbial light bulb lighting up above their head. In reality, innovation is more likely to be the result of a hundred failures than a sudden moment of genius.
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Pamela Spokes
Building skills for modern work through innovation challenges
Traditional courses don’t always help us practise the skills the real world demands. Innovation challenges offer a practical way to translate new skills directly into modern working life.
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Pamela Spokes
Developing the entrepreneurial mindset in education administration
To develop an entrepreneurial mindset within education administration, institutions must align their culture, structures, and metrics with learning, experimentation, creativity, and adaptability. That is the answer to balancing accountability with the constant need to develop and improve services.
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Pamela Spokes
Designing change: bringing service design to Namibia’s next generation of university administrators
Introducing service design principles can spark new ways of thinking about education, entrepreneurship, and social innovation.
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Pamela Spokes
Lessons from Namibia: Updating entrepreneurship education for a changing world
A strong entrepreneurial spirit exists in Namibia. Rethinking entrepreneurial education and nurturing startups helps the future of Namibia to bring innovative ideas to life.
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Eunice Siame-Moono, Pamela Spokes, Juha Järvinen
Episode 5: Innovation in Care from the Frontlines – A Conversation with Eunice Siame-Moono
In this episode, we are talking to Eunice Siame-Moono about using innovation tools and methods in healthcare and how new students can look for ways to innovate in their own future careers. She is a student at Metropolia on the cusp of graduating from the Nursing programme with a degree in Engineering and an MBA with aspirations to continue working in healthcare technology of the future.
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Pamela Spokes
Service design as a core competence in Finnish higher education
Policymakers, academic leaders, and educators need to recognise service design as a strategic necessity and make it a core competence across disciplines.
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Pamela Spokes
Prototyping as a tool to move ideas forward
Ideas are easy. What’s hard is figuring out if they are what people want and will use. Prototyping lets us test, tweak, and transform concepts before we waste time perfecting the wrong thing. The prototype stage is not about being right, it’s about being willing to learn.
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Pamela Spokes
Rethinking who innovates in your organisation
Innovation in organisations has a role to play for everyone. This article explains, how.
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Pamela Spokes
Empowering staff to build better services in Higher Education
Many university staff assume that design isn’t “their thing” – but design is not only about products or visuals.
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Pamela Spokes
Students with a vision for climate-smart cities: Co-creating the future in U!REKA
In a world facing accelerating environmental change, empowering young adults to co-design smart and sustainable cities isn't just educational—it's essential.
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Pamela Spokes
9 helpful ways generative AI can make life easier for anyone
Artificial intelligence is here, and perhaps its potential and limitations are easiest to identify by utilising AI for everyday tasks. How to start? Find encouraging ideas in this article!
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Juha Järvinen, Pamela Spokes
Episode 4: From Research to Reality – Turning Academic Insights into Innovation
In this episode of Innovators at work podcast, we will be looking closer at taking research and understanding how and when to make it a viable commercial product or service. There are different parts to break down what needs to happen and how you can do this in an academic environment. This topic is being pursued by universities around the world as we speak. They are all trying to get the research out of the papers and applied to make the world a better place.
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Pamela Spokes
From fixing problems to preventing them: Why service design is not customer service
Service design is a proactive business development approach that creates well-functioning services, reducing the need for customer service. This article explains the difference between service design and customer service.
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Pamela Spokes, Juha Järvinen
Episode 3: Prototyping – Turning ideas into reality
In this episode of Innovators at work podcast, we will be looking closer at Prototyping and how to take intangible ideas and make them into something tangible. This process of creating tangibility is so important in the innovation process. It is a form of communication. This is why it is vital to incorporate prototyping into everyday activities in the workplace.
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Pamela Spokes
What is U!REKA and why it matters to our universities and communities
What happens when universities from around Europe decide to work together and not compete? They can create something greater than the sum of their parts.
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Pamela Spokes, Juha Järvinen
Episode 2: How ‘innovation events’ shape future thinkers
In this episode of Innovators at work podcast, Pamela Spokes and Juha Järvinen will be looking closer at Innovation events: challenges, hackathons, service jams, design sprints, etc. and how these can quickly and effectively change mindsets around innovation and innovators. And how identifying with this mindset is the biggest step towards becoming an innovator that there is.
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Pamela Spokes, Juha Järvinen
Episode 1: Innovators vs. innovations – Where should we focus?
In this episode of Innovators at work podcast, Pamela Spokes and Juha Järvinen will be looking closer at Innovations versus Innovators: People vs outcomes. These two things are different but connected! How people recognize innovation and how they can take part in it themselves?
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Pamela Spokes
How service design can solve everyday sustainability challenges
Discovering what motivates people via listening and learning from them is the first step to achieving meaningful, lasting, and positive change.
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Pamela Spokes
Digging deeper for direction: What is the goal of the goal?
Asking what the goal of the goal is, is another way of asking why. This is what service designers mean when they say that they need to understand the customer of their customer. What are the right questions to ask?