About

This blog is my third blog but first in English. On my previous jobs in different universities I’ve participated in several international conferences. There I’ve noticed that I also need an English blog if I want to keep in touch and discuss with my colleagues.

It took me ages to have enough courage to blog in English. I took a minor step in Amplify towards it and still had to harbour the idea for a while. I asked on  Quora if it is horrible for native English speakers to see and hear non-native English speakers in social media. I got one answer and it was so positive that I took the next big step and started this blog!

My interests in this blog

In this blog I write about all the issues that interest professional me. Above all is social media, not from technological point of view but as a phenomenon that challenges business, people, and culture. I’ve studied marketing and international business but in my student days nobody talked about social media – rarely teachers and professors even talked about e-business, and it was less than ten years ago.Today even the smallest companies have to cope with social media, so something has changed a lot since then. Recently I’ve worked in e-Tourism field, so great deal about these posts are somehow connected to tourism industry.

The other thing I write about is sensemaking of commercializing academic research. I’m a bit worried that the enormous reseach investments and all the efforts to push innovations forward are at risk to go down the drain  if we don’t do something as soon as possible. We have already seen many cases where patents and innovations derived from academic reseach in Finland have eventually monetized overseas.

In my dissertation I analyze critical events in research commercialization from sensemaking point of view. It seems that one of the biggest challenges is to change researchers’ attitudes and organizational practices towards favouring commercialization in universities. Researchers tend to hide their findings in scientific publications. On the other hand universities don’t allocate resources for commercial activities nor reward those who have succeed in commercial terms.

Thirdly, I use this blog in the courses I give in various schools, universities, or elsewhere. The first blog post of all time is actually written for my course at the university of applied sciences. Usually I teach about social media and its use in business, or commercialization and innovation but sometimes I’ll give lectures about other things as well.

I in a nutshell

I was born in Mach 1978 in a tiny village named Utajärvi. It’s located near Oulu in the northern Finland. Utajärvi is not in Lapland, however.

After comprehensive school I went to the University of Kuopio (now University of Eastern Finland)  first to study biochemistry and biotechnology. After only a few months I noticed it wasn’t for me. I applied next year to study business and management and was accepted.

In 2000 I was accepted to the University of the West of England. My aim was to study Bachelor degree there in program called business studies with combined sciences. Again I noticed quite early that it wasn’t what I had expected and thus, I travelled back to Finland after seven months.

I continued my studies in Kuopio, and graduated in 2003 as Master of Economic Sciences. My major was marketing and international business but I also studied management, accounting, and philosophy. After my master I did basic studies in pedagogics. too.

Then I worked in several places but mostly I’ve worked in the university. I started as an assistant of marketing in Kuopio, then moved on to planner and finally worked as project manager in e-tourism related projects in Savonlinna.

Today I live with my common-law husband (what a name!) in Savonlinna and work as an independent researcher. In winters I drive a snowmobile and in summers a motorbike. In between I do geocaching, jogging, and hunting with my dogs. When I’m too lazy about doing anything I watch movies, read, or blog:)