EVOLUTION OF AN INNOVATIVE BUSINESS EDUCATION MODEL FROM FINLAND IN DIFFERENT EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

Senge (1994) named five areas which would not be successful without each other about ‘How do we create our own reality – and how can we change this?’ in his book ‘The Fifth Discipline’. The five areas are: system thinking, personal direction, mental models, joint vision and group learning. Development of these areas is the basis of an exciting and innovative Finnish higher education system (Tiimiakatemia - Team Academy) which was also awarded by OECD and has been run at JAMK University of Applied Sciences in Jyväskylä since 1993. Main principles of this methodology are learning by doing, real business environment, promoting learning instead of teaching, self-regulation instead of controlling and examining, and developing the students’/teampreneurs’ own responsibility for their own learning.

This methodology contains several exciting elements that differ from the conventional higher education methods. The founders put a lot of emphasis and effort to spread this efficient methodology worldwide. It has been applied in several countries in Europe on different education levels for some years.

Authors of this study apply this Team Academy methodology at University of Debrecen Faculty of Economics and Business since 2010. Several universities have applied this unique education system like Mondragon University in Spain, Team Academy Amsterdam in the Netherlands and many universities in the UK.

In this study the authors have made a comparative analysis on how the elements of Team Academy are applied by the international higher education institutes.