Taik, the university of art and design, has been a hard biscuit for Aaltoes. As a Taik student myself, I had my hesitations: we value freedom of expression and independent mind. Thus chats about business and industry seem a bit off tone.
Indeed, we met lots of doubt in Taik when we tried to convince people to support and participate in entrepreneurial activities. However, where there is a problem there is often a solution: designers are taught in school to have the attitude to change the world. As a major innovation force, designers just can’t stay in the comfortable zone of beautiful concept without execution. That’s why we pushed hard to overcome the resistance and organized the startup evening in Taik. Maija Itkonen from PowerKiss (industrial design), John Evans from MultiTouch (industrial and new media design), Hanna Kurkela from Selki Fabrik (fashion design), Mirjami Malleus from Remake EkoDesign (textile design) and Richard von Kaufmann from Zipipop (social network and web service research), gave talks to Taik students.
Though from totally different domains, we are proud to have them all tonight – because they are all designers, and four out of five are Taik alumni. They openly shared their own story of swinging between the role of a designer and of an entrepreneur: there are moments of reward and moments frustration, but most of all, they made their great ideas come true. They set up role models for design students who are determined to create things of their own. As givewaways they all mentioned the following: build the team, find the right people, collaborate, and last but not the least, never give up. We were happy to see people enjoying the evening. A lot of talk, sparks of inspirations, surprise of connections. We are more than happy to see new students joining in and maybe this event has made a slight difference in Taik’s mind.
Big changes are made up of small ones.
Aaltoes made the first kick in Taik. That’s what entrepreneurship is about, isn’t it?
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Good viewpoints. Sadly I missed the event but I hope we’re going to see more Taik students in Aaltoes events and in startups
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