COMBINES STATE-OF-THE-ART ACADEMIC AND PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE

The Service Design for Executives (SD4X) program combines extensive academic and practical knowledge into a compact, hands-on course. It is specifically designed to provide actionable and relevant skills to senior executives across a wide range of industries.

COMPACT LEARNING BLOCKS OVER A 9-MONTH PERIOD

The pilot program is planned for the 2020/21 academic year, starting in January 2021, divided into 6 week-long segments online via Tallinn, Maastricht and Riga. The course structure allows participants to actively use the skills learned in the periods between the weekly sessions.

3 COUNTRIES

It is created in collaboration with

– Tallinn University,

– Maastricht University Service Science Factory,

– Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and

– Brand Manual.

On August 26, a public seminar “Managing expectations: The application of service design in real organisations” was held at the Energy Discovery Centre within the Service Design for Executives (SD4X) training program.

The playlist below contains videos:

• SD4X Keynote: Varieties of Skills and the Dignity of Work – Triin Lauri

• SD4X Keynote: How a B2B hardware company expanded its portfolio to B2C services

• Overview of the SD4X course and lessons learnt – J. Margus Klaar and Külliki Tafel-Viia

• SD4X TOP3 Pitches – Andris Eglājs

• SD4X TOP3 Pitches – Anneke van de Langkruis

• SD4X TOP3 Pitches – Mark Trimpe

• SD4X Panel discussion: How service design should be learnt and taught?

• SD4X Graduation ceremony

ORGANISERS

Tallinn University is the largest university of humanities in Tallinn and the third biggest public university in Estonia. It consists of 6 institutes and 1 college. We have more than 7,500 students (with 9.5% of them international), and over 400 researchers and lecturers.

Our main strengths lie in the fields of humanities and social sciences, but we also have a strong and constantly growing component of natural and exact sciences, as well as a notable tradition of teacher training and educational research. We have five interdisciplinary focus fields: educational innovation, digital and media culture, cultural competences, healthy and sustainable lifestyle and society and open governance.

We contribute more to society by promoting intelligent lifestyle in Estonia. We interpret intelligent lifestyle as making research-based decisions in order to improve society in general and the well-being of its citizens.

Stockholm School of Economics in Riga has been established in 1994 with the goal to provide state-of-the-art education in economics and business that contributes to the economic and social development of the Baltic region. The community at SSE Riga consists of about 400 Bachelor and EMBA students from Latvia, Baltics and other countries thus creating a truly international spirit.

Being a small business school with only one program in BSc and one EMBA SSE Riga has proved to be very dynamic in designing new courses and teaching methods. Thus the involvement in the development of modern and innovative course in service design is a logical step in accordance with the schools mission and international ambitions. We expect to develop curricula that will provide the course participants with valuable knowledge and skills that can later be applied in their daily work to improve the efficiency and appropriateness of provided services and in the longer run will provide an impact on society in general.

In 2010 the school of business and economics of Maastricht University started the Service Science Factory (SSF) in order to provide a place of practice, applied research and professional education on the topic of Service Innovation. In its 10 years of existence SSF has concluded more than 60 strategic and operational service innovation projects for different governmental as well as profit and non-profit organisations.

What makes SSF unique is that it is able to tap into the vast amount of academic knowledge within Maastricht University by recruiting students (18.000+) and researchers from its 6 faculties. In a pressure cooker environment facilitated by SSF-project leaders, these students and academics work together with business professionals to tackle real societal and business challenges between 4 to 12 weeks depending on the challenge.

Brand Manual is a pioneer in service design and an international service design and branding agency. With offices in Tallinn, Maastricht and Stockholm, Brand Manual serves a diverse portfolio of clients from breweries to medical companies. By relentlessly focusing on the customer experience, Brand Manual has helped develop unique service concepts that fundamentally change how companies operate. After all, competitive advantage no longer comes from what an organisation does, but from how it delivers. Technology is changing everything and quality has become just a hygiene factor.