Sixth Session of the BRIDGE Project in Saint Petersburg
In the framework of the development of PetrSU as a flagship university and the international project ENI KO1013 "Bridge - Barents Region Initiative for Developing Growth and Employability", ITMO University, Saint Petersburg, hosted the 6th session of business cases solving.
In October, ITMO University (the National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics) in Saint Petersburg hosted the sixth session of the BRIDGE project that convened 49 people: 30 students, of which 20 Russian, 10 foreign; 12 coaches, of which 4 from Russia, 8 from Finland and Norway; 7 commissioners from Saint Petersburg.
The 3-year BRIDGE project is a part of the CBC Kolarctic 2014-2020 program. Alongside PetrSU, the project involves 4 partner-universities: UiT the Arctic University of Norway (Lead Partner), Lapland University of Applied Sciences (Finland), Murmansk Arctic State University, and ITMO University (St. Petersburg).
The sixth session of the BRIDGE project featured cases from 7 companies of Saint Petersburg, all of which are involved in marketing and digital economy: Arcadia, Geoscan Group, Digital Design, Trip for students, Teachingame, Cofium, KORA. The cases are solved by 9 international interdisciplinary student teams, as the companies Teachingame and Cofium had submitted two commissions each. The cases are diverse: from promotion of a drone show and teaching florists, creation of a brand for a “smart” coffee shop, and gamification in school education to development of digital solutions for business-class tourism industry, tours around Russia for international students.
The 6th BRIDGE session was held in mixed format, as the students from Murmansk and Saint Petersburg and the coaches were working offline at the premises of the co-working center of ITMO, while other partners (PetrSU, UiT, LapinAMK) joined them online. Traditionally, the colleagues from Finland Anitra Arkko-Saukkonen and Anzelika Krastina jointly with the Norwegian colleague Mathew Lynch held 4 workshops on the Creative Steps methods aimed at teambuilding and preparing interim and finals presentations using the Padlet online boards. Moreover, during the Workshop Week, the host university of ITMO held 3 educational lectures with visiting expert lecturers: Igor Kuprienko (Project Management), Natalia Lukovnikova (Foresight), and Anton Gopka (Innovative Entrepreneurship). Mr.Gopka is the Dean of the Faculty of Technological Management and Innovations of ITMO, a venture capitalist and general partner of the ATEM Capital management company, and is a columnist with Forbes.ru.
Communication during the 6th BRIDGE session was carried out via the official Microsoft Teams platform.
PetrSU team consisted of 5 selected students: Andrey Chuvak (the 2nd year Master’s Degree student of the Economics and Finance program of the Institute of Economics and Law), Ekaterina Moiseeva (the 4th year Bachelor’s Degree student of the Tourism program of the Institute of Physical Culture, Sports and Tourism), Ilya Tkachuk (the 3rd year Bachelor’s Degree student of the Management program of the Institute of Economics and Law), Pavel Stafeev and Evgenii Plenkin (the 3rd year Bachelor’s Degree students of the Economics program of the Institute of Economics and Law).
The students have successfully passed the auditions in the English language and proved that they are proficient enough to communicate freely in international interdisciplinary teams and solve cases under the guidance of Oksana Prokhorova, the Associate Professor of the Department of Economic Theory and Management of the Institute of Economics and Law.
In the course of a week, the participants of the session have been meeting with managers of Russian companies from Saint Petersburg to work out a team solution. By the results of the session, the teams presented interim presentations with action plan for the following five weeks of online work. The final presentation will be held in the form of a videoconference.
