I am a service business professional. The essential part of professional service business is that the customer/end user is always engaged in co-creating the service. In addition, co-creation is an essential part of a good operating culture in a service organization. Service design, undertaken professionally and through co-creation also creates insightful knowledge to aid in decision-making.
I built a lot of my practical knowledge when operating as an entrepreneur with my sister in Juhlapalvelu Gourmande Ltd for almost 20 years. In the catering business, engaging the clients and facilitating events were part of my everyday life. Our service promise of” something new for each party” challenged me to create new customer-originating service packages almost weekly. Our business had 300 to 350 customer orders each year. We sold our company in 2010.
So far, I have held over 500 trainings/consulting projects/workshops focused on service business development and overseen executing several projects. In addition to consulting and acting as an entrepreneur I’ve also worked as a lecturer, researcher, project manager, research leader, and as an entrepreneurship and innovation manager at e.g. Laurea university of applied sciences, which is a global trailblazer in service design. I also have a strong background in pedagogical knowledge and expertise.
Because I wanted to challenge my learning on a deeper level, in 2010 I started to create a doctoral dissertation on co-creation, service design and service innovation at the Cambridge university. In 2015 I had my dissertation. Some might think I slipped fully into theory at this point, but during the process I developed and productized the innovative CoCo Tool Kit to develop services, and gathered the dissertation data by playing the CoCo Cosmos service design game. A game, that has won an innovation award and is for sale on the market and around which business has formed. My dissertation work involved cooperating with 12 Finnish organisations.
As my latest innovation project I’ve developed a game called Boost+Inno, funded by a Business Finland project called Boosting Innovations Into Business, which boosts the commercialization of innovative ideas and helps to picture what the innovation process/developing new activities is about.
My strengths in addition to my professional skills are energizing and exciting people into action.
