Business schools join forces to reduce food waste within unique virtual learning initiative

The course “The world in the making: tackling world challenges” has been developed and delivered in a collaboration between USI Lugano, Switzerland, Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), and Hanken School of Economics. The cooperation has also engaged International Food Waste Coalition (IFWC) as well as Sodexo France and Sodexo Sweden. In addition, other organisations such as a retail store, a school cafeteria, a dedicated school garden and a start-up restaurant have been involved.

- The idea behind the course is to focus on specific, wicked world challenges, by which we mean tough problems that stem from the interface between the economy, society and environment and that cannot be solved by any single intervention, says Hanken professor Liisa Välikangas, who is one of the masterminds behind developing the course. “With the help of the course, we are looking to develop a set of robust methodologies and a tool kit for the tackling of such global challenges over time”.

During the course, student teams from the three business schools have worked on and experimented around solutions to the challenge at hand, worked with local organisations and presented their approaches in a virtual Summit conference that ended the course. The course started with a physical kick-off at Hanken in which faculty and students from Helsinki, Lugano and Stockholm participated, together with member companies of the International Food Waste Coalition.

The challenge for the students in spring 2017 was to investigate problems and possible solutions for food waste reduction.

- One third of all food produced for human consumption is currently wasted at a significant cost amounting to €143 billion for Europe alone. Hence, this is a very illustrative example of a world challenge of the scope around which it was possible to unite academic and corporate participants, Välikangas continues.

For the course, Hanken developed a concept for virtual learning that combined existing software and tools such as Moodle, Office365 and Skype. The concept was used by all three participating universities to deliver the lectures and seminars, and to connect the students with the industry partners throughout the course.

- This type of learning concept allowed the students to take part in flexible learning exchanges without them having to engage in time-consuming travel, explain Kicka Lindroos from Hanken.

The students of the three business schools greatly enjoyed working in international, cross-university, teams.

The course continues with food waste as the challenge also next year. Also, there are plans for an open hackathon – a hands-on event to develop novel approaches in participant teams - to be organised in the University of Lugano campus in 2018.

The findings and thoughts of the participating students are published in the World Challenges Blog: https://worldchallengesblog.wordpress.com/articles/.

More information at Hanken is given by:

Liisa Välikangas
liisa.valikangas@hanken.fi