Innovation Reflection

Sprint Innovation course – What did I learned? What was the meaning of it? Why it was important to me? And where and when do I plan on applying it?

Those are the questions what comes to my mind, when I think the innovation week that I went through. I attend challenge named K.P Kauppias Ruuskasen Säätiö, which one concentrate on student’s mental -and physical health.

For us innovation started already week before with innovation paja which was really helpful tool for the sprint. I got many good tools from that session to help my team in that week, for example different ways to figure out the idea and how to develop it. I will lie if I say that it didn’t help me at all.

Although, I wasn’t so motivated and excited about this week, because it was mandatory and “extra” work and I thought it wouldn’t give me anything that I already knew. Also, hearing that there will be different people with different backgrounds who don’t even study entrepreneur or team leader studies was nerve-wracking, and I was hoping that I will get good team with full of motivation so I can turn my attitude for this course. That didn’t happen.

What did happen was I got people who were also there, because it was mandatory for them to graduate, and they didn’t care of it at all. That was the turnover point when I changed my mind set to look for the positive things about it and how to get something useful for future. And also, we need to pass this course, so I tried to motivate my team and did a speak for them to get our team closer and get the work done. I got very good feedback from my team, here is some of them.

“Kasperi was our key player, because he gave us positive energy with good humor and figure out our business idea/product and sell it for us well”

“Kasperi was always smiling and idealizing things for us and kept our team working in schedule”

“I felt like Kasperi did more work than others although he didn’t do writing official papers etc. He was working and idealizing non-stop and helped us every task if we needed help, great humor and was always ready with good responses”

So, I learned that I can be very effective person for my team when I just switch my mindset correct way. I did know that I have leadership build on my DNA, but this week showed me that if a team doesn’t have a leader, it will not lead good results. Also, this was different way to lead people, because in military it was totally opposite way. This was more human-like leading, and I got good experience of that so I will use it more in future.

I learned also that our topic was so big and critical that it can’t be handled just in a week. It needs work very much, because now many students are only suffering, and their studies go by, and they don’t learn anything. Also, I learned different techniques to innovate new idea!

Biggest meaning to me was to work as a team and get things done in a short time. It is good to us to get used to it that we will have always little pressure on us when we start our own businesses. The challenges have their bigger meanings, but for me this challenge and that problem was most meaningful. I noticed that team effort is very meaningful also, because without all members effort the work will get very heavy and might feel that you can’t survive it, because I went through those feelings. I don’t blame my team, because I wasn’t motivated also, but I can say without me that team wouldn’t get that far.

For me it was important to learn more of myself and how I can change my mind set very easily with couple tricks. Also, working in important topic was one of the things because I got finally motivated. Leading a team was important for me, because I have missed it. Otherwise, I didn’t feel that this course was so important for us entrepreneurs, because we will have our own lecture and real-life experience later.

I will apply this course learnings to my personal life specially in business side. I take the great tools with me and experiences also and try to avoid mistakes that we made in our journey for our final product. I can also use my frustrating tolerance when I will start up my own business or when I have some hard meetings with clients.

In conclusion this was emotional roller coaster, and I don’t think this is necessary for those who don’t want to go there as a voluntarily.

References:

 Sprint innovation week

Kasperi Pitkänen

17.03.2023

Proakatemia