Researchers

Impact of OpenInnoTrain on my career and organisation

How has the secondment created new perspectives for applying your knowledge in practical situations?

Coming from the industry, we prioritize practical and realistic solutions over academic ones. That being said, we are also keen on developing our new ideas and radical approach with a solid foundation of innovation. In this sense, the possibilities for us to engage with top-notch research groups are of great value. Hence, this secondment allowed us to take this valuable time to engage and discuss with many groups and researchers about our ongoing and future projects and explore ways to engage them in the future.

Secondments are great opportunities for an industrialist like me for two reasons. It allows us to get more focused on the state-of-the-art research in our domain. It gives us perspectives to challenge our limits on an individual level to move to the next stage. On the industry-level, it allows us focus on the frontiers of science and technology in my industry, so that we have something new to offer to our clients. On global level, recently I was nominated by the Finnish government for the prestigious Mission Innovation Champion award. Working with top-notch scholars in the domain allow us to challenge our understanding and ability to solve a problem with the best thinking in the world.

How has the secondment created new career perspectives for you?

I had the opportunity to develop new courses for the university using our industrial solutions. I had the opportunity to engage and discuss with 4 important labs and institutions. I was able to network with regional industries and research labs to build our business further in the region.

For sure we had opportunities to learn about the nuances of cross-cultural and multidisciplinary skills, which we actively pursue and promote in our business. This is very important for us as a company to build new collaborations between countries and regions.  We are also planning to organize and lead an innovation hackathon in the coming months within the OpenInnoTrain project. 

How has the secondment given you global mobility opportunities?

I consider myself as a global citizen. As a Swiss citizen of Indian origin presently working in Finland and who has lived and worked in 10+ countries in 4 continents,  I had enough of global mobility in my life. So, it was not the main motivation for me to do the secondment. On the contrary, these secondments allowed me to take time out of my usual industrial routine and learn different perspectives of ongoing work in R&D area in academia. To be a key differentiators for us as a company in these markets, we have to constantly attract motivated and committed people to work on industrial challenges. 

The question is rather straightforward for me to answer as we come from the industry. We bring the context of the society and industry we are in, but we are keen on learning the perspectives of new learnings to solve these problems. We had the opportunity to explore these alternative dimensions during these secondment period. 

How has the secondment given your organisation opportunities?

One-month period is short to answer this question affirmatively. However, we are looking forward to the next period of the upcoming secondments to test and measure these factors for innovation and impact.

We are exploring new possibilities to develop industry focused projects with the institutions. We can answer this question as and when things move forward in the coming months.