The University of Oulu has got funding for carrying out work on the legitimation of newness and its impact on EU agenda for change (LNETN). The LNETN project, with a budget of over four million euros, belongs to the Innovative Training Networks of EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. The University of Oulu, the Aalborg University from Denmark, the Halmstad University from Sweden and the University of Glasgow from Scotland form the project consortium. Several associated industrial stakeholder partners are also involved, including Bittium and Nokia in Finland.
Altogether fifteen Early Stage Researcher (ESR) positions are offered through LNETN, of which the University of Oulu hosts four. These are Smart energy (ESR8), Moving beyond technology frontiers (ESR10), Developing 21st century platform business models (ESR12) and Dawn of the human-centric personal data market (ESR13).
The researchers selected to carry out these studies are as follows.
Rashid Sadeghian (ESR 8). Rashid earned his Master’s degree from the University of Tehran, Iran. He will address smart electricity systems, regional markets and innovative business models. Meeting the EU’s climate change and energy goals for 2020 and beyond will require strengthening and upgrading existing networks, as well as integrating the growing amount of renewable energy, enhancing grid reliability and developing innovative business models.
Julia Zhang (ESR 12). Julia earned her Master’s degree from Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. She will examine the ways that personal data management can support the development of platform-based business models, as there is a need for a shift towards human-centered data management. This will both enable new business opportunities and provide more transparency on how personal data is processed and deployed.
Hamideh Saadatmanesh (ESR 13). Hamideh earned her Master’s degree from the University of Isfahan, Iran. She will study the emergence of businesses in the context of human-centric personal data. The objective is to explore this from the point of view of service providers. The results can help organizations to better orchestrate the knowledge, innovation and business ecosystems. The work will also have implications for practitioners seeking to understand the prerequisites, opportunities and barriers in personal data based services, as well as for consumers using them.
N. N. (ESR 10). This position will be filled by the end of 2020.
The research to be carried out will be supervised and the LNETN collaboration managed by Petri Ahokangas, Timo Koivumäki and Minna Pikkarainen of Martti Ahtisaari Institute, Oulu Business School.