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Case RIESCA Rescuing of Intelligence and Electronic Security Core Applications, was the first
of our externally funded RD projects: between October 2007 and March 2010. The research of
RIESCA addressed a number of systems such as transport and logistics, power and telecommunication,
hydropower and nuclear power stations, which are critical to the day-to-day functioning of any
technologically advanced society such as Finland. In RIESCA, the understanding and design of the RD
consortiums as a driver and relationships of trust- based networked expertise were founded. This was
our first integrated and externally funded RD project, which was particularly implemented in study
units in an interoperative and student-centered manner. It represents the beginning of student-
centered RD discursion in publications of Laurea: as volume 1 in samples of evidence series Pirinen
Rajamäki, 2010.
3. Research findings
The study provides insights into core process of research consortium and its mutual properties, which
can be shared. One of the key finding is that building of research consortium would be before the proposal
sending phase. This diverse and such as diplomatic work is noteworthy: according data of this study, then
ideas and issues were progressed to proposals by research collaboration in the framework of research
consortiums which were built often in first phase. Then, the proposals are as collaborative results which
are comprised from ideas or issues. This setting is figured in conclusion part as action logic from
bridging a world of strategies, visions, thinking and creativity activities to the world of proposals, as well
as,
integrating regional development activities, key regional profiles and higher education institution work
with research consortium-based emergent value networks. In this sense, the consortiums have
similarities to the emergent value network as stated in Pirinen, 2008.
According the data of this study, followed the theme of emergent value, higher education institution
and enterprises together can do cooperation as an educational gateway to external funding and research
consortiums. It is implicated in this study, that collaboration improves an understanding of the RD
signification in the communities of work in where higher education can contribute knowledge
dissemination, share information and increase understanding, especially in the field of emergent and
small and medium size enterprises. The enterprise and consortium collaboration can be also understood as
one significant way into international markets and global knowledge-service dissemination. This nature
joins the higher education’s RD to the international research collaboration, funding mechanism and
emergent global business. As reflection about learning theories, a
constructivist concept of learning, which is based on cognitive psychology, was widely spread and
influenced in the context of this integrative theme and study of research consortium effects. According to
constructivist view, knowledge is not transferred to students, but it would be constructed by the students
themselves or it would be co-created by RD participators. Then, in this study, the term
“constructivism” as approach refers to reality being constructed individually or collectively and a social
reality would be constructed by those who participate in it e.g. work packages in a consortia.
In this study, learners generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences
and participation, their ideas and the learning process were experiential through real life experience to
construct and improve knowledge and understanding in international context. In this sense, the contribution
of consortium work is in improvement and sharing of regional-global knowledge reserves and joining of
needed critical mass and capabilities for consortium- based innovations, often these can be radical
innovations, such as global information sharing artifacts-services.
In this integrated process by collaborative consortium’s RDs, involved students interpret their
observations on the basis of previous knowledge and experience, and they continuously build a world view
by providing experiences with meaning through
interpretation. This kind of authentic reflection means questioning the own presuppositions on which beliefs
are founded. Here, the student’s mind-set and knowledge building are based on individual
experiences and knowledge, which, therefore, produce individual learning outcomes, spirit and mind settings.
In this motivational setting, the reflection
on one’s own starting points may lead to regenerative,
situational and expansive learning. In this study, the learning by RD functions was
used for authentic research targets within the context of consortiums and regional innovation systems and
the bindings of world of work, then; the learning mode was achieved through activities and experiences in
these RD interventions. Here, the focus of RD related learning concerns the adult’s learning process
that was related to the student’s professional growth: a expertise growth, learning and development, and it
emphasizes the central role of concrete experience, event and mechanism as elements of critical realism
Reed, 2009.
Since, this critical realism related finding implicates that RD authenticity within
consortium work expands higher education capabilities and mobility for new service-artifact development,
hence, activated service-artifacts includes some mechanism, event and experience which can be
described by way of ontology and epistemology.
In this study, the main advantages to the research consortium were on the improvements which were
produced through the dynamics of
interactions and
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communications among higher education, industry and workplaces on the social mechanisms of selection for
their evolution Etzkowitz Leydesdorff, 1998. Here, student expertise and a student-workplace
relationship can be seen as a knowledge bridge which connects path-dependency and cultural-dependency
nature of knowledge of work places and realized knowledge economy in evolution of research
consortiums. A process of participating in social research communities makes sense with shared
cognitive processes, values, relations, trust, identity creation and situated learning. This is noteworthy, for
example, due to long specialization careers and positions of networked students, students can advance
the networked expertise of different requirements in the world of work and then represent the expertise
organizations as a body of knowledge in a particular domain of research consortium. Then students can
bring focused and expertise knowledge which is far behind the body of knowledge in university and then
this knowledge is difficult to achieve in the theory oriented university alone e.g. SATERISK.
The regional development sights of sharing RD functions were in the realization of environment with
innovativeness, consisting of higher education spin- offs and initiatives for knowledge-based economic
development, and strategic alliances between the
actors of the regional RD, higher education and global network. Here, the drivers consist of: regional
innovation system; co-created strategies and emergent value networks; international knowledge sharing; and
vision-based management with its: co-creative discursion, transparency, shared regional RD
agenda, mutual trust, strategic selections, and commonly understood volition. This can be
compressed: fitting together the regional strategies, regional RD profiles, RD related learning
processes and activities of research consortiums as a considered setting of steering elements in a regional
configuration cf. Harmaakorpi, 2004.
4. Conclusion
