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Tutkimus-, kehitys- ja innovaatiotoiminnan sydämessä

Avainsana: development

The critical role of research managers and associates in securing the future of RDI
http://Young%20adults%20at%20office,%20three%20seated%20around%20a%20table%20and%20three%20standing%20behind%20them,%20discussing%20with%20each%20other.
21.11.2023
Maarit Haataja & Virpi Turkulainen

Research managers and associates (RMAs) play a pivotal role in simplifying administrative processes, promoting ethical research, and enhancing research productivity for researchers. In this blog we highlight the evolving role of RMAs, the challenges and skills of RMAs, and the importance of recognizing and upskilling professionals in various areas in the research, development, and innovations (RDI) field. We also emphasize the significance of networks like EARMA and EU initiatives to support RMAs. Currently the greatest challenges the RMAs perceive are the recognition of the profession, AI, increasing competition of funding, and complexity of the professional landscape. The needed future skills include flexibility, resilience, communication, multitasking, and empathy. This was surveyed during the European Association for Research Managers and Associates (EARMA) annual conference in Prague in April 2023, with 1400 participants. Evolving roles and needed skills of research managers and associates RMAs play a crucial role in supporting and facilitating research activities within research performing organizations. Many studies show that RMAs are valuable in simplifying administrative tasks, providing resources, and offering comprehensive support to researchers, enabling them to focus on their research while navigating the complexities of the research landscape. This support enhances the quality of research, efficiency, and effectiveness of research activities within institutions (1). Moreover, these identified skills as well as major challenges are largely also on the agenda of the EU. To strengthen the EU’s position in the global RDI landscape, the European Commission introduced a common European Research Area (ERA) in 2000. This New ERA was adopted by the European Council in 2021, also putting forward the first ERA policy agenda with 20 action points to address the current challenges Europe is facing (2). One part of this policy agenda is Action 17, which addresses the strategic capacity of Europe’s public research performing organizations (including universities, universities of applied sciences, research centers etc.) (see also EARMA, 2023). The aim of the action is to strengthen the European area in the global research landscape, and, in practice, this means that the EU wants to respond to and develop solutions for the issues that research managers and administrators (RMAs) in Europe face. Important for us is that Finland, among 14 other member states, has announced its support for this action. Addressing European-wide RDI challenges with strategic actions As a response to challenges, the European Commission envisions building strategic capability of RMAs in four key areas: (1) upskilling, (2) recognition, (3) networking, and (4) capacity building. This will be facilitated by existing RMA communities and organizations, such as EARMA (3). In addition, two EU-wide development projects have been initiated: the RM Roadmap (earma.org) and the CARDEA Horizon Europe projects (ucc.ie). The European Commission coordinates the existing projects, aligns the initiatives on the European level and provides funding together with the Member States for activities on a national level. In Finland, the national organization Finn-ARMA (Finnish Association of Research Managers and Administrators) is taking forward the initiatives by the RM Roadmap project. We can think of at least three reasons why this is a critical development of both from the institutional perspective as well as individual level. From the institutional perspective this provides better opportunities to facilitate securing the talented RMA professionals in their ever challenging and demanding roles through better recognition of the profession and providing diverse professional opportunities for them - the role of RMAs is a critical but often invisible intermediary between science and administration (4). Moreover, funding to facilitate capability building of RMAs will be available to facilitate the development of activities at the research organizations. And finally, providing upskilling and training in a coordinated manner at the European level benefits especially small institutions, such as Laurea, Metropolia and Haaga-Helia, as we have less internal resources for training of staff. From the individual perspective, this provides a better opportunity for all professionals involved in RDI to formally get recognized and merited for the critical and highly demanding work that RMAs, such as Specialists, Coordinators, Project Managers, Grant writers, and Data and open science experts do. Moreover, this also encourages the professionals to get involved in networks, such as EARMA to meet fellow colleagues and to engage in professional development activities. As universities of applied science are still fairly small and young in terms of RDI activities, these communities and networks provide an excellent opportunity for knowledge sharing and learning from peers. And finally, soon there will be a number of training and upskilling activities provided for the professionals, facilitating professional development. As an example of bringing the developmental aspirations into practice, in Haaga-Helia, profile streams have been identified and developed for RMAs. The focus of the experts can be in RDI support (with special focus e.g. on open science, PM knowledge), EU affairs, or research development. Experts can be hired as a Specialist or Senior Specialist. Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences’ impactful collaboration In the Finnish capital region, 3UAS alliance with universities of applied sciences Haaga-Helia, Laurea and Metropolia, we are working together to facilitate the achievement of ever growing impactful RDI objectives of Finland. The parliamentary research and development working group has outlined the goals of raising the level of spending on research and development to four percent of gross domestic product by 2030 (5). In order to succeed in this, we need to for example encourage collaboration between academia, industry, and government to foster innovation and knowledge transfer. promote partnerships, joint projects, and knowledge-sharing. to participate in international research collaborations and programs to leverage resources and share expertise. Authors Maarit Haataja works as R&D Manager at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Maarit has a doctorate in biology and has worked for the past 25 years in the fields of research, research funding, business cooperation, research impact and as a supervisor. Virpi Turkulainen works as Head of Research Services in Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences. She has a doctorate in industrial management and has worked in research and higher education for 20 years in Europe, USA and Asia. -- EARMA is the European Association for Research Managers and Administrators and the main European organization for research managerial and administrative professionals. This year’s EARMA Conference took place in Prague, in the Czech Republic, April 24-26, 2023. Over 1400 participants gathered in a Prague Congress Centre. The conference provides an opportunity to network, share best practices, and connect with research managers and administrators from all over the world. References Andersen, J., Toom, K., Poli, S., Miller, P.F. (2017). Research Management Europe and Beyond, Elsevier, 378 pp. European Commission (2021). European Research Area Policy Agenda - Overview of actions for the period 2022-2024 (PDF). EARMA (2023). Action 17 and its potential for the RMA community (earma.org) Santos, J.M.R.C.A., Varela, C. & Kerridge, S. (2021). Professionals at the interface of science: is there more than meets the eye? Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education, 25:3, 100-105. Valtioneuvosto (2023). Tutkimus- ja kehittämistoiminnan rahoituksen käyttöä koskeva monivuotinen suunnitelma: Parlamentaarisen TKI-työryhmän 2022 loppuraportti (PDF). Valtioneuvoston julkaisuja, 2023:13, 70 pp.

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Communications is a universal profession – staff exchange helps to broaden networks
http://Campus%20building%20yard,%20with%20water,%20trees,%20pathways.
15.4.2023
Milla Åman Kyyrö

With Erasmus+ programme, the EU supports staff mobility for teaching and training activities between institutions of higher education (HEI). The mobility experience with EU's Erasmus+ programme benefits participants in different ways. This blog post explains, how a communications professional can benefit from this opportunity. Identify your reasons for the exchange The similarities we share with strangers in another country stay hidden, until we choose to look closer. Exchange of thoughts, ideas and knowledge is fundamental when we thrive to grow our understanding of the world, and ourselves as human beings. Once getting familiar with others, the similarities are revealed. Before applying for exchange, I scrolled through organizations we have mutual exchange agreements with. Then, I checked our organization’s notifications about the upcoming staff weeks in different European institutions of higher education (HEI). None of them felt quite right for my specific interests. So I did quite a bit of research to find the places I would ask to visit. Many organizations produce international staff weeks, and during and after Covid-19 pandemic, the online versions of exchange programmes are available. For the convenience of the mutual thought-exchange, I wanted to make sure the conversations would be taking place in English. Now that UK is no longer part of the EU family, there was just Ireland to bother. And none of their institutions answered back. The superficial differences between a Dutch and a Finn I knew from previous experiences that my best bet after fully native English-speaking countries would be the Netherlands. Both Finland and the Netherlands share similar educational structure so that a university of applied sciences is not a total oddball when introducing my proposal for a visit. There’s the difference in funding models of HEI’s in Finland and the Netherlands. In Finland all degrees of education are free for students. The HEI’s are subsidized by Finnish government only after the student graduates. In most countries around the world, the student pays the tuition fee themselves. So the HEI’s abroad get the gold coins right when the student chooses the particular HEI for their study place. Depending on the industry, workplace culture and the individual personality traits, we have different working life practices and dynamics. The Dutch I have previously met, were very efficient and not afraid to speak their mind. I like that mindset. On this exchange period, the efficient Dutch working style was present, yet sofisticated. My host had designed a two-day visit, tailor made, just for me. I got to meet eight communications professionals, playing different roles at the hosting institution. The discussions were deep-diving and enlightening. Similar challenges and solutions were identified. Communications is everywhere but communications professional is a rare sight This may be a less obvious and not the most popular opinion, but. Erasmus+ staff exchange between institutions of Higher Eduction in the geographical frame of Europe is not that much of an internationalization experience for learning to understand different cultures, as it is an opportunity for collaboratively compare with colleagues the ways of working and recognize development issues. At HEIs, the role of communications is significant, but the number of communications professionals is small. I wanted to find an organization similar to ours, and get to the bottom of it: are they doing something better than we are. As I finally met the highly experienced communication professionals, and they were shocked to learn, how small our organization’s communications team actually is. They had a bit more personnel, and they too, sometimes, felt overwhelmed by the workload. So, are they doing better than us? Some of the things are obvious: more staff equals more resource for communications. But, it never is enough to serve every communications need, if “everything should be communicated”. Strategic choices and building a community inclusively with the members of organization, students, staff and shareholders alike, would seem the key to success. This is what my host institution in the Netherlands is actively promoting. I trust it will help them with the competition of diminishing number of students, as the new generations of students in Europe get smaller in numbers. Exchange supports internationalization but can be so much more The contributions of receiving organization are crucial for the sending institution’s staff.  Before my communications specialist career, I’ve been working as international mobility coordinator. I’ve help students and staff to internationalize, and received many exchange students and teachers to visit our organization. Many of them are still, after 15 years, keeping contact with me. I’ve been part of the team that has organized international staff week at Metropolia UAS. Having dozens of visitors at the same time is great, it brings the bubbly conversations to life, but the programme usually can’t cater for everyone to satisfy their specific desires for learning. A truly successful exchange follows the principle of reciprocity. My visit was very efficient, in Dutch style. I was surprised that staff of my hosting institution were not too familiar with the possibilities of Erasmus+ exchange. Many said they had never visited Finland. I've promised to host a visit, if they choose to rent a bus and have a little road trip up North. That is the least I could do. These were my experiences after a short but effective staff mobility experience a month back in the Southern Netherlands. Go and search for your own exchange experience! As an after thought: I’m curious to know if there is any HEI organizing international staff week only for the communications professionals? That would be absolutely brilliant. Let me know if you’d like to co-organize such an event with me - at our place or yours. Author Milla Åman Kyyrö (Master of media management, Master of cultural management). Milla works as a communications specialist at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (UAS), located Finland, Helsinki capital region in the research, development and innovations services. She's seasoned project communications manager and enthusiastic about international relations.

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Why you need to learn Service Design
http://An%20empty%20office%20room,%20with%20long%20table%20in%20middle,%20big%20glass%20windeows%20on%20one%20wall
6.4.2022
Pamela Spokes

Service design is about deep customer research, inclusion, prototyping, testing, and iteration. These are skills that almost everyone needs in almost every job. Everyone needs to think about the customer/user when creating something. Even a construction worker when building a part of a house should be able to think about how it will be used. Asking themselves ‘does this make sense?’ and flag things that maybe don’t. I use this as an example as I have just moved into a brand-new apartment and wonder what went into some of the decisions made that make no logical sense when it comes to actually using some things. In my opinion, everyone should learn these skills. These skills and tools are fairly industry and profession agnostic. How did we get here? Manufacturing was the basis of the economy for almost 300 years- since the industrial revolution. Underpinned by a vast knowledge gap between the producer and the consumer. The customer did not have access to quality comparisons, technical information of products, understand the process of creation/manufacturing, etc. There was a severe imbalance of knowledge that the producers and sellers could hide behind and take advantage of customers. But post-1950 you see a slow shift in how business is done. The shift from the power being in making things and selling them to being able to selling them in vast quantities to new markets. More products came onto the market and there was more choice - the seeds of needing differentiation were being planted. Between the 1950s and the 1980s, there was the drive of mass production and cheap prices as well as a still existing substantial knowledge gap between producer and consumer. The 1980s saw the beginning of a huge shift in how economies work. It was the time when technology began to play a bigger role in the economy - making goods more accessible to more people. This movement began to enable many new ways of working and how we consumed. Needing to differentiate the plethora of products, co2mpanies began to focus on the customer and differentiating through services. The 90s and beyond embraced ever-evolving technology - the internet, email, etc…this created access to information and the knowledge gap began to shrink rapidly. And so, heading into the 2000s, there is really a new way of organising the economy- a profound shift from value being exchanged from the producer to the buyer (with the value being in the product itself) to value-in-use. The value is in what you can do with the product rather than the product itself. A computer or a smartphone are only valuable if it has useful software on it and if you know how to use it. Services are E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E. So, services in the 2020s are EVERYWHERE. The value is now in what you can do with the products that we buy. Our products are now, in general, much more complex and much more a result of an ecosystem creating them than one manufacturer in one place. Your electricity is a service. Public transport isn’t only a vehicle, it is about where it can take you and how you access the information about where it can take you. Grocery stores are a service…in fact they are many services. Services really are everywhere. And understanding this is vital to being included in the discussion and the design of what comes next. It matters who is included Because services are everywhere, it matters who is included in creating them. Whose perspective are they taking into consideration when they design something (whether it is a product or a service)? It matters if one or more group of people are left out. It can be a life or death matter in fact. In car crashes, because the body of ‘Reference Man’ (based on white men aged 25-30 and 70kg in the 1970s) is used, it is a fact that “although men are more likely to crash, women involved in collisions are nearly 50% more likely to be seriously hurt.” A similar situation is known in mobile phone sizes (they are referenced on male hands, speech recognition uses mostly men’s voices, etc) and for people of colour, face recognition technology can have a hard time recognising those with darker skin tones which leads to a higher ‘false match rate’ when identifying criminals at a much higher rate. Even for everyday things, it can make opening your phone harder. This list goes on. So, it really matters who is involved in creating services and technology that the services rely on. It matters who leads Just as it matters who is included, it matters who leads. Leaders set the goals and targets in many cases and those matter to the work that teams do. How they see the value in co-creation and how they set KPIs matters. As one form of the saying goes “we measure what we value”. And it becomes more difficult when what we value cannot be measured in traditional terms. Can we measure the joy our service brings to someone? Maybe if you can dilute that into a happiness score or a return user score. But is it really measuring joy? How about inclusion? Can we measure that? We can measure who was there. We can even dig down and measure how often different people spoke if we really want to. But can we really measure inclusion with the tools we now use? Not really. Maybe this is more about how we value things or who has designed the tools that we have at our disposal. A good leader will value things that cannot be measured in traditional tools and maybe they will build new tools. So, it definitely matters what leaders know and how they use it. Our future depends on it Futures studies teaches that the future has the potential to unfold in many different ways. The depiction of this is shown in strange sounding “Cone of Possibilities” or “Futures Cone”. We all know that decisions and plans that we make today will determine the future that comes. But is there a way to design the future that comes more purposefully? Sure, there is. With the Futures Cone there are multiple potential futures. All with different probabilities depending on the decisions that are made from individuals, communities, and whole societies in time. From the Futures Cone in the image, you will see that there are many options. It is also noted that these are shifting and flexible. Here we are shown futures that range from the preposterous to the preferable with many ‘P’ stops inbetween. And how we get to our preferable requires us to specifically design it. Through backcasting and designing the changes we want to see, we can plan the steps needed to take to get to that preferred future state. We all need to be a part of this process otherwise we will be left only with someone else’s preferred state. Someone who has the skills, knowledge, and determination to forge a future that suits them. You can be absolutely certain that Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk are all involved deeply in designing the future they want to see. It is time that the rest of us started insisting on purposefully designing a future that includes us and those around us also. Author Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university admin focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. With a Bachelor’s from Canada, a Master’s degree from Sweden, an MBA in Service Innovation & Design from Laurea, and her AmO from Haaga-Helia, she is interested in purposefully designed experiences that are centred around the user. Don’t be surprised if she knocks on your door to talk about learning co-creation methods through intensive learning experiences.

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