Choose Your Future among TOP 35 Innovative Practices in AACSB’s Global Listing
AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) has selected 35 most inspirational innovative practices from its member universities through the Innovations That Inspire initiative. Altogether 315 practices from 188 institutions in 33 countries were submitted by AACSB member universities. AACSB is an U.S. organisation that accredits business schools all over the world.
In the photo are the representatives of the Choose Your Future project, Matti Sahi, Joonas Lyytikäinen, Susanna Lahtinen, Mikael Orpana and Tommi Pirilä at the Facebook Global Digital Challenge competition finale in Washington in 2016.
Through the Innovations That Inspire initiative, AACSB aims to identify and showcase a variety of ways in which AACSB member universities create added value in society with their innovative practices in today’s ever-changing and globalised world. The initiative highlights successful practices of creating change and environments for out-of-the-box thinking in business schools. The aim of the listing is to share good practices among the members of AACSB.
This year, Choose Your Future, a campaign created by a group of students from Turku School of Economics (TSE) at the University of Turku was listed among the top 35 in the Innovations That Inspire initiative. Altogether, AACSB received over 300 submissions from 188 business schools in 33 countries. This is the first time that a Finnish business school has been selected to the listing.
Choose Your Future was created in 2015 as a group assignment of 49 students on the Strategic Brand Management course at TSE. The group developed the About Turku mobile application providing asylum seekers with useful information about their new hometown in their own mother tongue. During the project, the students also set up a Facebook community enabling local residents and asylum seekers to discuss and learn about each other's cultures. In addition, Choose Your Future organised different events: a friendship football match between asylum seekers and Finns and a clothing collection for reception centres. Furthermore, the students organised a food event as part of the international restaurant day in November 2015.
In 2016, Choose Your Future won the Facebook Global Digital Challenge, a competition organised by the U.S. Department of State and Facebook. The competition was aimed at universities all over the world and its purpose was to find new solutions that prevent radicalisation utilising social media in particular. After winning the Facebook Global Digital Challenge, the group presented their project to the United States Government and the UN.
‒ Choose Your Future is a brilliant example of how to develop innovativeness and impact in university education: it reflects extending the ways of thinking as well as openness while considering different solutions to big, societal challenges, says Markus Granlund, Dean of Turku School of Economics.
The Innovations That Inspire listing was published at AACSB’s annual Deans’ Conference of the member business schools in the U.S. on 6 February 2017.
Read more:
>> 2017 Innovations That Inspire recipients
>> Choose Your Future Creates a Mobile Guide to New University Students
>> Choose Your Future Won International Competition with Campaign that Challenges Radicalisation
TS
Photo: Tommi Pirilä