Episode 2: How ‘innovation events’ shape future thinkers

[Pamela Spokes]

Welcome to the innovators at work podcast. We are both experts and explorers in the areas of service, design, innovation, culture, and entrepreneurial thinking. We want to break down these buzz-wordy concepts to make them approachable and usable for everyone. We believe that everyone can be an innovator in their own work

[Juha Järvinen]

In this episode titled How innovation events shape future thinkers, we will be looking closer at challenges, climatethons, hackathons, service jams, design sprints, etc. And these can quickly and effectively change mindsets around innovation and innovate. I am Juha Järvinen, innovation specialist.

[Pamela Spokes]

And I am Pamela Spokes, service design expert, here at Metropolia and we work in the RDI unit. So, Juha, as you know, there are many new and interesting things happening in the new Emerging Technologies and Entrepreneurship unit here at Metropolia. One of those things is the change that is taking place due to the U!reka Alliance we are in. This alliance will open up new opportunities for both staff and students in terms of courses and training, but it also gives access to all different kinds of events. One of the things that I’m doing in this alliance, personally, is focused on creating more innovation events.

[Juha Järvinen]

Oh, interesting. Can you expand on what an innovation event actually is?

[Pamela Spokes]

For some people, they solely refer to these innovation events as ‘hackathons’. But this is actually a bit of a misnomer or a mistake, because hackathons primarily refer to events that are tech-led. Here’s a piece of tech or a set of data that we have. What can we do with it? What could we create with this? And so, you’re really leading the whole thing with a piece of technology. Well, there are many other kinds of innovation events that involve no tech at all really. So, there are for one, there are design sprints which usually refer to something that is done in-house at an organization. So, a Design Sprint is a methodology that was developed at Google and is a four-to-five-day kind of intensive sprint that is for the purpose of solving pretty much one defined critical business problem.

[Juha Järvinen]

MHM. OK. Is that the same thing as a Jam?

[Pamela Spokes]

No. A Jam on the other hand, if we’re looking at in this context, so it’s like the global service jam. The global service Jam is an event that happens worldwide and it’s based on the design methodology to encourage collaborative service development and co-creation. So, there’s usually no tech involved in that. So, we often refer to challenges. That’s what the preferred term that I have is challenges and for me it’s much more of a catch all term than hackathons would be. Although hackathons is maybe a cooler word, these specific terms can be replaced with challenges.

[Juha Järvinen]

MHM.

[Pamela Spokes]

So, a jam could be a challenge. A design Sprint could be a challenge, so it’s much more of a generic term and you could incorporate that into different pieces of them. But to be honest, it’s all getting a little semantic when we’re talking about jams and hackathons and design sprints. So, innovation events are challenges whereby teams are formed and they work together to solve a given problem. In all the innovation events that I have been a part of, I have taught and used the design thinking process to create, prototype and test solutions.

[Juha Järvinen]

All right.

[Pamela Spokes]

So, Juha, I would be interested to hear from you since you are an innovation specialist. How do you feel about these innovation events and how they contribute to kind of ‘industry breakthroughs and collaboration’?

[Juha Järvinen]

I think innovation events, they help companies to understand the value of innovation. This is especially important if you are a smaller company and in Finland about 95% of all enterprises are small enterprises. In Europe, the figure is at the same level. It is often in smaller companies that daily time is spent on solving acute problems. That is, companies may not have time to notice that they have development needs and products, services, operating practices, and all the easy-to-use tools we can use to help companies to understand the importance of new development are valuable and useful because we at the university, we have new and of fresh thinking so we can support the growth of companies by offering them new ways of working. Of course it takes a lot of work to anchor them, but it is possible.

[Pamela Spokes]

So, actually in this 95% of companies, you’re talking about these small companies. I assume that one of the issues that they have, or really, I know that they have, is capacity issues.

[Juha Järvinen]

Yes, it’s capacity issues and it’s because most of the time in small companies of course goes as I said, in solving acute problems in their everyday work, so they probably in some instances they do not recognize that they have a problem to be solved.

[Pamela Spokes]

Yeah, and they can also use the capacity that the students have to make new things happen in their company.

[Juha Järvinen]

Yes, exactly. So, Pamela, what do you know about the psychology behind why innovation events might be better at creating fresh ideas rather than the traditional brainstorming?

[Pamela Spokes]

Well, brainstorming is a concept that was really created back in the 1950s. And then popularized in, you know, the cinematic Mad Men era of the 1960s in conjunction with advertising.

[Juha Järvinen]

Mm-hmm.

[Pamela Spokes]

Mostly a bunch of men sitting around a table throwing out ideas. No diversity, no real process. Just kind of loud and possibly, probably, obnoxious. And it hasn’t really changed much, to be honest. The loud and obnoxious part, mostly because, of course the loudest gets heard the most in that kind of traditional brainstorming. But brainstorming in an everyday way happens a lot still, and it is problematic because specifically in this format, it is really those who speak the loudest who have their voice heard and in a group of people there are many different ways that people want to participate, but necessarily they can’t. And so, getting heard is difficult. But we know that there are many kinds of personality types, and many people don’t want the spotlight on them like that. So, the ideation techniques that are used in these innovation events are more about getting as many ideas out of people as possible. This means that they need everyone to participate, so they have to be designed so that everyone has a chance to have their voice heard, but they don’t have to stand out. They’re usually things like what we call brainwriting, which is a silent form of brainstorming that just requires people to write their ideas down and add them to a pile. No spotlight, no attention. And everyone in this form is able to contribute equally, and this leads to more ideas and better ideas overall and better possibilities to actually build on ideas. 

[Juha Järvinen]

Yes, interesting. How does the timing issue help with these ideas?

[Pamela Spokes]

Yes, timing, you know, these innovation events have very restricted times that you can participate in them. And so, when you’re doing the ideation, when you’re doing all the different parts, they have to be limited in time. It’s not endless time, so the timing element is important so that there is this time pressure that builds, which means that there is an urgency. This means that there is less time to filter ideas based on your own prejudgment. You just put it out there in the pile and let the chips fall where they may, and then you need, you know, as many ideas as possible as we mentioned. So, things that you previously might have worried about presenting just get added to the pile with everything else. So the ideas can be more risky and they can lead to breakthroughs. There is no time for kind of side quests in this way. One of the things that I love about innovation events is the speed at which you can go from having no idea as a team to having a tested concept and prototype. You will be amazed at how much can be learned about user needs, desires, and expectations when your concept is tested by people during the event. And how that shapes how you move forward with your idea. And then once you have presented it to the rest of the people, you will get even more feedback and this allows you, quite surprisingly, to go in just a couple of days, from some from nothing to something and it’s quite amazing.

[Juha Järvinen]

OK, you mentioned design sprints earlier. Are there any good examples of what that is?

[Pamela Spokes]

Yeah, I had quickly said that they were developed at Google. And so, the origin story of design sprints is actually really interesting. Jake Knapp, who wrote the book, it’s called Sprints and it is the process of the design sprint and he worked at Google. He worked at many of these these top companies and he was really frustrated with their development process. You know, things that would take 18 months to get, you know, rolled out to the customer and tested and he could see that this was really holding a lot of projects back. So, he really kind of pulled things back and said, OK, let’s fully concentrate on one thing and see if we can get it out in a week. You know in the original one they had to do this in Stockholm they had a week in Stockholm where they had to roll out something. So, he was involved actually in the development of Google Hangouts. So, like a precursor to Google meet. And it was meant as an internal tool for their distributed teams that are around the world for Google and so they needed a video conferencing thing that worked the way they needed it to work. And so, they were able to use that as the first prototype of this method, this design sprint method, which was a 5-day method when it was first created and now it’s kind of been even squished a little bit more to be more of a four-day method. So, they were really working on one thing that they needed. In their team to use, which is what I said originally, the design sprint was. So, Juha, we haven’t run any design sprints together, but we have run a few other types of innovation events and you have been at Metropolia as an innovation specialist for a long time now.

[Juha Järvinen]

For a long time.

[Pamela Spokes]

Yes. What are the educational outcomes of these kinds of events that you see?

[Juha Järvinen]

There’s lots of interesting learning outcomes of these intense events.  

• to learn that you can move a project forward far faster than you have ever imagined by just getting you to engage and entrepreneurial mindset
• to teach more people about the service design process 
• to build something that you could not have built alone
• to foster a willingness to experiment
• to recognize the benefits of the user research and the feedback cycle to development of concepts
• to meet and work with new people. Teamwork
• Last but not least, to allow people to have fun while they create.

Yeah, but on the other hand, sometimes there are people who do not want to have fun while they create. So, what about if people are reluctant?

[Pamela Spokes]

Yeah, some people come along to these events either because they have to or someone told them they should, and so they’re not always willing to be open to the process. And that’s something that happens in innovation events. You have to be really open to what happens there and be open to taking other people’s ideas and feedback. And I have one example. Quite recently I was running an innovation event at a university in Canada and one of the people there was there because her boss told her she had to be there and she made it fairly clear at the beginning that she didn’t think that this was for her. She wasn’t sure what she was going to learn from it, and she was, I would say, almost a little hostile in her communication style. But you know, this was a three-day event and by the end of the second day, she specifically came to talk to me and said “I finally understand why my boss wanted me to come here. And this is really amazing. I’ve learned so much, and the tools that I’ve learned here, I will definitely be able to take back to my workplace and implement them. And I can see how these tools will help me to make better services and provide better service for our customers”. That was very wow. It made me feel good.

[Juha Järvinen]

Yeah. Definitely, yeah. Yeah. Reminds me of one instance years ago in an implementation of 10 days 100 challenges which we are going to discuss I guess a little bit later on. But there was a student who was a little bit reluctant of also participating because they had some problems in talking in English which was one of the necessities in 10 days 100 challenges because the communication in those implementations is in English. But after going over that obstacle, that hurdle at the end of the day, that particular student was very happy that she participated and delivered a very beautiful portfolio. And everything was fine. So, I think that was a good example of how people can go over their personal obstacles in their thinking while they participate in these events. And I guess it was the event itself that made her think that I can do this.

[Pamela Spokes]

Yeah. Yeah, it really does help people to see things differently and to use a different mindset.

[Pamela Spokes]

Can you talk a little bit about the Metropolia Minno and how those are entwined with this?

[Juha Järvinen]

Yes. One tool that we at Metropolia have been offering for a long time is Metropolia Minno. It is a compulsory course for undergraduate students. It is an intensive implementation lasting 7 weeks and during that time a multidisciplinary group of students will take up the challenge presented by a company. And the challenge must not be a pre-thought-out problem, but rather a more general one. For which student teams then are asked to come up with solutions or fresh ideas. And the implementation is concise and utilizes a toolbox which, with practically the same tools as in service design. Trying to find the new perspectives on what is the root cause and most importantly not just patching problems.

[Pamela Spokes]

OK, so you’ve been able to take this kind of intense innovation event or these challenges and actually turn the whole thing into a course? Exactly. OK. So, we have also run the 10 days 100 challenges event together. So, can you explain to us how the 10 days 100 challenges is different than the Metropolia Minno course?

[Juha Järvinen]

Mm-hmm. Sure. The basic difference is that it’s outside the university academic calendar, allowing it to be a real intensive 10 days. Of course, similarly, as in Minno, the companies present the challenge which is not subcontracting but a real challenge. The student teams then gather together to work in the multidisciplinary way to produce ideas to, to challenge, and at the end of the day they are presented and pitched to the companies.

[Pamela Spokes]

So, we have also run the Clean City Challenge together and we did that with the City of Helsinki. So, that took place in November and December of 2024.

[Juha Järvinen]

Yes, we did.

[Pamela Spokes]

And we ran that even a little more differently than we have than we run Minnos or that we run the 10 days 100 challenges. And, in that sense, we had two full day workshops that were teaching the students the different tools, the service design and all of those tools that they were going to need. And then we had them pitch their final products and services to the City of Helsinki. So, they contracted us to hold this event.

[Juha Järvinen]

Yeah, and that was, of course, good news and nice to hear that the activities we have had were so interesting that we had good cooperation with the City of Helsinki.

[Pamela Spokes]

So, this City of Helsinki challenge that we had this clean city challenge, it was actually one of the events that didn’t have any credits attached to it. But there was prize money. So, the winner of that one, how much was it? Was it 3000? I think €3000 is what they won. And so, one of the things that happens with these challenges that we put together is they usually either have credits attached to them like the 10 days 100 challenges or the Metropolita Minno or you can get some kind of prize. Sometimes it’s money. Sometimes it’s something else, so that’s also very interesting to see how those different aspects are used for creating interest for the students.

[Juha Järvinen]

Exactly. And then Pamela, you’re currently doing some very interesting work in the U!REKA Alliance. Can you tell something about that?

[Pamela Spokes]

Yes, so part of the work that I do here at Metropolia is dedicated to building this U!reka alliance within Metropolia and within the partners that we have. And together with them. So, just a quick kind of background, our U!REKA partners are Hogent in Belgium, and we have Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences in Germany, we have the Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon, which is in Portugal, the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, the Technical University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic, and also, we have some associate partners. So, we have Odessa in the Ukraine. There is also the University of Applied Science in Vienna and Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland. And we do have, you know, other more associate partners. It’s quite a large group of people, but we mostly work with our full partners, which were those, those universities, said at the beginning. And so, what we’re doing is we’re trying to work together to create more and more opportunities for students to interact, to learn from the other institutions and a really good example of how that is actually being felt in the institution itself here at Metropolia, is beginning in April of 2025 and going through to May and June, we are running what’s called Change Agents and that is an innovation event.

[Juha Järvinen]

Wow.

[Pamela Spokes]

That we’re doing together, in which part of the program will be online. So, the stuff we do in April will be online and we’re going to host classes and again teach the students some of the tools that they’re going to need and listen to some of the expertise from the different professors that will be needed in the topic of the challenge. And the topic of the challenge is Smart Cities and Climate Neutral. So, it’s a very broad topic and students will need to kind of come together. They will be in multi-institutional teams and even in those they will be, you know, multidisciplinary and they will come together for a week in Helsinki to work together. So, this year, Metropolia is hosting it. Last year it was hosted in Amsterdam and we are going to be hosting them here for a week and they’re going to work in their teams and then they’re going to present their ideas in June at our last online session together. So, this is something that students can get involved in. It’s 5 ECTS and it’s, you know, it’s really interesting to be able to work in these cross-boundary, in so many different ways, cross-boundary teams. So, as we see, there are many different ways to set up these kinds of innovation events. These different challenges; there different time frames, they have different ways of being in person or being blended or being online. There’s also different ways of rewarding them. And you know, the most important thing that ever comes out of these events is teaching the skills of creating ideas and making ideas tangible. And, you know, it goes back to the last episode where we were talking about creating innovators. That’s the most important thing. And because we are doing these things in conjunction with outside actors, so this, whether it’s the city’s private businesses, NGO’s, whoever, we’re able to create outcomes that go beyond Metropolia itself or go beyond our partners in the U!reka network. So, Juha, I’m very interested. How do you see the ability of these events as we saw that they’re in conjunction with outside actor cities etcetera. How do you see the ability of these events to impact the connection and collaboration between institutions and these private companies, organizations or cities?

[Juha Järvinen]

Yes, from the company and public organizations perspective, they increase understanding that by working together with us in the university with higher education institutions, they can gain new knowledge that will benefit their development work. And of course, it is especially important for our students to get to know companies and organizations at the same time. And it will increase students’ job opportunities and, more generally, that students graduating from us better understand the companies they’re going to work for. 

[Pamela Spokes]

And that is really our job here at the institution.

[Juha Järvinen]

Yes, exactly. That is our job.

[Pamela Spokes]

So, if we take this back to the title of the episode, which is How innovation events shape future thinkers. We can see that the students can take the learning that they get from their entire degree program, plus what they learn in the innovation event themselves about innovation, about entrepreneurial thinking about service design and about the companies themselves with their interactions. And they are able to turn this into a much better way of going off into work life. 

Thank you for joining Juha and myself today and listening to the Innovators at Work Podcast. This episode covered many issues and if you take nothing else with you, please take away these three key points. #1 not all challenges are hackathons. #2 taking part in these types of challenges, when possible, will always be beneficial for learning. And #3 these events show you how to move from ‘no idea to idea to a tested concept’ in a short amount of time. So, join us next time for another episode of the Innovators at work podcast.