The event brought together around 150 students and ten service providers from different sectors. Among the service providers LUTES, JHC, LUT Invest, Business Mill, Xplorer & EIT, Saitemia, Etelä-Karjalan Osuuspankki, GastroBar Saimaa and TEK-Lounge were presenting their activities and services.
The idea behind the event
At the Lappeenranta campus, there is a general realisation that information about the opportunities available on campus does not reach both parties. There is a wide variety of organisations, companies and services available to help students, but unfortunately often the information does not reach the target audience, the students.
Based on this, an Open House Tour event was created to bring together students interested in entrepreneurship and the organisations offered by the Lappeenranta campus and thus to introduce these organisations to the students. In the Open House Tour, the organisations hold various checkpoints around the campus, where they present their work in their preferred way. Students go around these checkpoints like in appro-events, collecting stamps for their event passports and receiving an overall badge at the end of the event.
Benefits for both parties
The Open House Tour is designed to be beneficial for both students and participating service providers. Students will gain new knowledge and businesses will potentially gain new customers.
LUT University and LAB University of Applied Sciences encourage their students to develop an entrepreneurial attitude by encouraging them to challenge themselves and be brave enough to experiment and develop their own ideas into action. Despite the wide range of services available on the Skinnarila campus, the problem can easily be a lack of knowledge about the services available to students.
For service providers, the Open House Tour is an excellent opportunity to raise awareness of the organisations' own activities and the services available to help students. Organisations will gain demand for their services and new perspectives directly from students.
Future of the Open House Tour
Feedback collected during the Open House Tour says that the event was seen as useful and informative. The event will be organised in the future as well and, where possible, will be further developed according to the wishes of the participants, for example by increasing the number of checkpoints for different organisations and by making students more aware of different services. One wish was to increase the visibility of the event in order to further increase the number of participants and the benefits of the Open House Tour.
Sources
LAB. 2022. Know, solve, commercialise, succeed. Project. Accessed 29.11.2022. Available https://lab.fi/fi/projekti/osaa-ratkaise-kaupallista-ja-menesty