During the 2013-2014 academic year, I have been the head of the Content, Business and Technologies (CBT) minor study program at Aalto University. CBT prepares the students to understand creative industry project management and processes, as well as leading and managing projects. During this year, the first year of the program, I was involved in setting up, promoting and running CBT, and also in teaching the main course of the program – Art, Technology and Business.
The CBT study program follows a hands-on approach and prepares the students to generate innovations for the cultural and creative industry sector. In particular, the program concentrates on media, ubiquitous computing, cross-media, creative sector services and customer relations. The study program is organised in collaboration with the Departments of Media (Aalto ARTS), the Department of Media Technology (Aalto SCI) and Department of Marketing (Aalto BIZ), and is coordinated by Aalto Media Factory. The first edition of the CBT program started in January 2014. After a selection process, 10 students were chosen across different Aalto University schools.
In the CBT program, students can choose from 15 courses from the participating schools (ARTS, SCI and BIZ). There is one compulsory course – Art, Technology and Business. The course consists of two parts, one per semester. The first part covers important topics in the intersection of management with art, design and technology, such as: design management, innovation, service design, agile development, social media and business, entrepreneurship, ubiquitous computing, art and business, games production, and cross-media. It relies heavily on guest speakers relevant to these topics – invited speakers have been: Iñaki Amate (Fjord), Christian Lindholm (Koru Labs), Markus Koljonen (ex-Futurice), Richard von Kaufman (Zipipop Freud), Heidi Tikka, Petri Ikonen (Electronic Arts), Nelli Lähteenmäki (Health Puzzle / Startup Sauna) and Sami Kallinen (YLE).The second part of the course will be essentially project-based – the students will develop a group project, involving planning, designing and launching a new digital product or service.
Website: cbt.aalto.fi
