Altogether around 20 students in four teams took part in the event that was launched on November 17 by our President & CEO Jari Rosendal and on November 18 they pitched the ideas to the Kemira Boot Camp Jury.
Reetta Strengell, Director, R&D, was one the organizers of the event.
“We had a successful and inspiring virtual Boot Camp with Aalto University students. The Boot Camp was originally planned to be organized as f-to-f in spring 2020 but plans were cancelled due to Covid19. However, now we have proven that the event was a success via Teams as well! Collaboration with Aalto University’s professor Tapani Vuorinen worked well.
During these two days of Boot Camp, international and multidisciplinary teams developed their solutions together with our mentors. In addition, teams were able to use various experts from the entire organization, if they needed more detailed information about some particular topics. The outcome of their work was amazing – in such a short time period students were able to prepare professional proposals and presentations. For sure, we’d like to continue this cooperation with Aalto in the future, and this concept can be well implemented in other internal innovations as well,” Reetta comments.
Winning team and their idea
At the end of day 2, the teams pitched their ideas to Kemira’s Jury and one team was chosen as the winner.
Sampo Lahtinen, our head of the Espoo R&D center, was a Jury member and commented the following:
“The Jury was very impressed by the quality and energy of the students. Every team was able to identify and address relevant global megatrends as well as Kemira’s long-term strategic ambitions. The proposals were innovative and courageous, and the presentations were inspiring and professional. Choosing the winner among a group of strong candidates was a difficult task as all teams had their own strengths and the overall quality was high. Ultimately the Blue Team claimed the victory with a proposal which addressed global challenges such as climate action and energy transition, was a great example of the “waste to value” concept, tapped into the benefits of digitalization of operations, and was a strong fit with Kemira’s current and future markets and interests.”
The mentor for the Blue team was Timo Härmä, Sr Manager, R&D.
“It was very interesting, inspiring and refreshing experience to work with Aalto University students in this Boot Camp. The team had actually worked on some ideas and questions on bio-based area and we had a pre-meeting where we went those through and managed to select some potential topics for the pitch. Feeling in the team was good all the time and we were already able to choose the main topic for pitch from several ideas already during the first day. Working through Teams went also surprisingly well even though I would have preferred to have us all in one place face to face. Data sharing in Teams chat was very intensive and I was very happy with the efficient team work and utilization of their different kind of competencies during the whole process. At the end presentation material was looking really great, we managed to practice it and the actual pitch by the whole team went very well.
Congratulations to the Blue team and thanks to experts from R&D and Sustainability organization who commented the first version and helped move it into the right direction!”
Feedback from the winning team
Caro Stefano:
“I really liked the camp, and I think this online version was really interesting, as we worked as a team with different backgrounds, different nationalities and even different locations worldwide. In my opinion this event could be considered as a real life challenge when working in a multinational company. The assistance of Timo was really precious. The initial challenge was to understand what to do, so the first days was just inventing the idea from scratch without any target. But I think that was also part of the challenge.”
Irene Purasachit:
“The Boot Camp was amazing! I really learnt so much during the two days especially as I’m from Design and have very little knowledge of chemistry. Our team mentor, Timo Härmä, provided us with such insightful insights and it was great to be able to hear from the other experts in each area once we came up with a specific idea or needed more information. I was slightly intimidated by the challenge (and working fully through Teams) at first but with such a multidisciplinary team but we were able to generate many interesting topics and then concentrate on the right portion with the support of the experts. Overall, this was such a great and unique experience for me. I’m glad I decided to take part in this course and appreciate Kemira for not cancelling the camp but making it happen smoothly virtually!”
Anna Pölönen:
“The Boot Camp was very insightful! I’m amazed by the wonderful team I got to be a part of; I learned a great deal from the team and our mentor Timo Härmä. Couldn’t have imagined working with such amazing people! On the other hand, hearing Kemira’s experts and getting to know more about what they’re working on made a positive impact of Kemira as an organization and employer.
From an IEM (Industrial Engineering and Management) student’s point of view the event was a great way for Kemira to apply external innovation to search for new ideas. The event was organized very well and as a participant I hope there will be other events alike: I think that on both the organizer and participants’ side this kind of collaboration generates insights that might not emerge otherwise. Thank you for organizing the Kemira next 100 years boot camp!”