EDU-Creating New Customer Value

Kuva
Picture: EDUCRO project logo
The cultural sector is facing new complex challenges. Cultural and hospitality producers and practitioners of different sizes need new competencies to create new value for internationally competitive cultural products. The customer-orientation and audience-relation have to be reinvented constantly. Digital technology is creating new opportunities but also competition. There is a need for new networked competences - for educators and their institutions and cultural practitioners and their organizations in order to reach new audiences and in order to create new business models and revenue sources. In addition, creative entrepreneurs lack business, entrepreneurial, management, production, and marketing skills as well as knowledge about immaterial rights and internationalization.

Project EDUCRO responds to these challenges in the interaction between higher education institutions and cultural organizations. The project builds joint bridges for innovation, new products and eventually new knowledge-based jobs in the cultural sector. The purpose of the EDUCRO project is focusing on well-educated and innovative regions of partners. EDUCRO creates an interactively cocreating cross-border alliance with partner education institutions and their partners, businesses and institutions in creative and culture and hospitality industries.

EDUCRO builds regional and cross-border partnerships by means of developing co-creative education and future-oriented innovation-capacity building contents and methods for value creation. The partners in the project develop education environments, methods and courses and the contents of the education to meet the education gap, to support the innovation capacity and competitiveness. The contents of education focus on customer-oriented product development, digital opportunities, new revenue models and developing audience relations. As a result, new courses and programs will be developed.

The education development utilizes regional, inter-regional and cross-border co-creation partnerships. EDUCRO promotes R&D, education, skills development, and lifelong learning. The partners benefit from the project collaboration by studies and experiments that focus on improving service-design, design-thinking and customer-oriented product and audience relation development of new digital technologies. EDUCRO supports the use of new ICT by businesses and training institutions for innovation and joint educational planning. Virtual reality (VR) and other technological solutions (3D, AR) will be used as tools for learning, developing and testing.
Project period
-
Project state
Finished
Project area
International
Project funding
South-East Finland-Russia CBC
LAB role
Lead partner
Unit
Business and Hospitality Management
Project focus area
Innovations
Takes place in project

Publications in the project

Cross-border cooperation and increased digitalization enhanced by COVID-19 restrictions resulted in a number of experiments with the learning methods of educational partners, and business models of collaborating culture and tourism organization. The good practices and lessons learned were documented in the various publications, aimed at professional community, educators and general public. The list of publications with the links are presented below.

  1. Bogdanova, 2020. Culture and Tourism: Life in “The New Normal”. https://blogit.lab.fi/labfocus/en/culture-and-tourism-life-in-the-new-normal/
  2. Remsu, 2020. Korona ei lannistanut kulttuuritoimijoita. Alkusokin jälkeen alkoi syntyä uusia ideoita, tuotteita ja verkostoja (Korona did not discourage cultural actors. After the initial shock, new ideas, products and networks began to emerge).  https://sko.oaj.fi/uploads/2020/10/334be6e0-skootteri_3_2020_web.pdf
  3. Bogdanova, Kondrashova, Iso-Aho, 2020. Building Bridges for Cross-Border Alliance: Educro Project. https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-827-343-4  (Collaborative educational methods publication)
  4. T. Vuorela, K. Meltovaara, U. Tuominen, O. Bogdanova, "Developing Sustainable Business Management Education in the Cultural sector", 15th International Technology, Education and Development Conference, 2021. https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2021.1109  
  5. K. Meltovaara, O. Bogdanova, T. Vuorela, "A cross-border collaboration involving SMEs and universities of applied sciences", Proceedings of Cross-cultural Business Conference, 2021. https://doi.org/10.2370/9783844080322 (Collaborative educational methods publication)
  6. O. Bogdanova, K. Brusila-Meltovaara, L. Janhila, J. Iso-Aho, T. Vuorela, "Cross-border experimental e-learning experiences", 13th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, 2021. https://doi.org/10.21125/edulearn.2021.1485 (Collaborative educational methods publication)
  7. I. Kizilova, E. Kondrashova, “Cross-border cooperation projects for the cultural sector of St. Petersburg”, in Enabling Positive Change, 2021
  8. J. Iso-Aho, ”Suomalais-venäläistä kulttuuriyhteistyötä pandemian aikaan”, in Väläyksiä Humakista IV, 2021[OB1] 
  9. K. Remsu, ”Kuinka rakentaa kokemusken asiakaspolkuja”, in Skootteri, 1/2021. http://www.edigi.fi/sko/skootteri/202101/?fbclid=IwAR0M-bBvp-b6BZF4ehoehcpwgS2arm5vgbsz8zF6mvbK4yqmmWNbyI5EB0A
  10. O. Bogdanova, K. Brusila-Meltovaara, 2022. “Building International Collaboration: Tips and Lessons Learnt”, LAB Focus, https://blogit.lab.fi/labfocus/en/building-international-collaboration-tips-and-lessons-learnt/
  11. O. Bogdanova, K. Brusila-Meltovaara, J. Iso-Aho, T. Vuorela, 2021. ”Service Design Experimental Learning in Adult Education”. ICERI2021 Proceedings. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2021 (Collaborative educational methods publication)
  12. O. Bogdanova, 2021.  “Developing customer-oriented business concepts and models in culture and tourism sectors”, LAB Innovations Annual Review 2021. https://www.theseus.fi/handle/10024/506869  (Collaborative educational methods publication)
  13. K. Brusila-Meltovaara, O. Bogdanova, J. Iso-Aho, P. Vartiainen, 2022. ”Curriculum design through university-industry collaboration project”. INTED2022 Conference proceedings.  https://dx.doi.org/10.21125/inted.2022.1000  (Collaborative educational methods publication)
  14. O. Bogdanova, K. Brusila-Meltovaara, M. Ikävalko, I. Kizilova, E. Kondrashova, 2022. ”Developing curricula as part of cross-border Collaboration between Higher Education Institutions (HEI)”. Cross-Cultural Business Conference, 2022, p.247. https://doi.org/10.2370/9783844086256 (Collaborative educational methods publication)
  15. O. Bogdanova, K. Brusila-Meltovaara, 2022. “Digitalization in the tourism industry”, LAB Focus. https://blogit.lab.fi/labfocus/en/digitalization-in-the-tourism-industry/
  16. O. Bogdanova, O. Ilchenko, L. Sidorova, 2022. ”Lessons Learnt from COVID-19: New Skills for Sustainable Value Creation in the Culture and Tourism Sectors”, LAB Innovations Annual Review, https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-827-428-8
  17. O. Bogdanova, 2022. “EDUCRO summer camp for culture and tourism students: best practices and lessons learnt”. In ICERI2022 Proceedings (pp. 686-690). IATED. https://dx.doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2022.0224 (Collaborative educational methods publication)
  18. O. Bogdanova, 2022. “The ENCATC Congress celebrated its 30th anniversary”, LAB Focus, https://blogit.lab.fi/labfocus/en/the-encatc-congress-celebrated-its-30th-anniversary/
  19. M. Ikävalko, P. Vartiainen, 2022. “Lessons Learnt: Experiences and Good Practices in EDUCRO-Project”, The Publication Series of LAB University of Applied Sciences, part 50, https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-827-419-6  . The book contains 9 articles from the project team.
Objectives
EDUCRO builds an interactively co-creating cross-border alliance with partner education institutions and their partners, businesses and institutions in creative and culture and hospitality industries in order to develop new competencies. These competencies include new knowledge and networking skills that allow local companies, entrepreneurs and cultural organizations to create new customer-oriented internationally competent cultural products and services in the digital age.

EDUCRO develops co-creative education and future-oriented innovation-capacity building contents and methods for value creation. The partners in the project develop education environments, methods, and new work-life relevant courses and the contents of the education to meet the education gap, to support the innovation capacity and competitiveness. The courses content reflects the needs of the creative and hospitality industries and includes new customer-oriented cultural service concepts, created in cross-border collaboration.

EDUCRO enables dissemination of the results by the development of the collaborative education methods and communicating them by publishing the reports and journal articles and participating in the relevant events.
Realisation of goals
The realization of the goals will be performed by implementing 7 work packages, which activities include:



- Recruiting 10 local culture and tourism organizations in South Karelia and Saint-Petersburg for cooperation;

- Analyzing the educational and developmental needs in the culture and tourism industries;

- Creating six culture service concepts;

- Developing and organizing work-life relevant courses including exchanges of the teachers;

- Organizing 8 experiments with cooperating organizations;

- Developing 6 collaborative education methods;

- Disseminating the results through publications and participation in the relevant events.









Outcomes
The outcomes of the project include:



- 6 new customer-oriented cultural service concepts, created in cross-border collaboration

- 6 collaborative education methods

- 2 new work-life relevant courses based on international collaboration

- 4 exchanges

- 2 online courses

- 8 co-creation experiments

- 2 publications (business models, customer-oriented product development)
Sustainable Development Goals
Project managers
Olga Bogdanova
olga [dot] bogdanovaatlab [dot] fi

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