Ten students from EUAS across Creativity & Business Innovation, Startup and Entrepreneurship program went to VIKO -Vilniaus Kolegija for a Blended Intensive Program – BIP. The one-week intensive and inclusive program was hosted by the Faculty of Business Management of VIKO starting 8th May to 12th May 2023 in the beautiful city of Vilnius in Lithuania at their business management faculty. The studies at VIKO College are organized across seven different faculties or campuses across Vilnius. Namely – Faculty of Business Management, Arts and Creativity, Pedagogy, Health Care, Agrotechnology, Economics and Electronics and Informatics.
The overarching theme for this BIP was Creative/Modern/International Management styles and techniques. The program aimed to gather new modern and creative management styles and innovative solutions from all the attending students. This also involved developing scalable solutions for a real-time problem for Teltonika a local conglomerate from Vilnius, Lithuania. The participating colleges and universities had diverse nationalities. In all, there were 7 countries including VIKO’s Business Management UG program students.
The kick-off event took place on 24th April via MS Teams meetings, where all participating universities were asked to present one slide introducing their respective universities.
The first day in Vilnius started with the introduction to the VIKO’s business management faculty, followed by sharing of the week’s agenda and participants’ expectations was set by the host- International Business Department. Followed by a business presentation on Digitization and International Marketing by Lecturer Gintare Guleviciute from VIKO. The concluding session for the day got all of us awe-struck by the super and wonderful performances from the group “Voruta”. This involved live music, dance performances and traditional folk Lithuanian songs sharing their rich tradition. The closing highlight was, the participating students were invited to come on stage and share their steps to jingle all the way.
The opening of day 2 was by Mr Darius Čepulis, Head of B2B and IoT Academies at Teltonika Telematics group. This presentation gave an idea of the business scale of Teltonika, its products, services, and customers. Later, we were introduced to the group task, which was “How to attract the right talent for Teltonika?”. At the end of the day, we all were part of more than 13 groups, each group had a good mix of students across all the participating universities. The interesting highlight of this day was the group activity and the amalgamation of all the team members and students to the final task of making an impactful presentation. How to focus on positives and how to identify negatives, so that they are excluded.
On the third day we had a full day planned for leisure. This involved first a guided tour to a prison which was built before WW1 and was most recently 2019 converted to a tourist destination. It was a great experience to know the myriad stories of various famous crimes and criminals, including the changing rules by different nations, much before Lithuania earned its freedom from the Soviets.
The fourth day of the mobility started with an opening session on “Design Thinking Principles”, and we all were given a task to work in our groups. The focus was to ideate, conceptualise and design innovative management styles and creative techniques to attract and retain the right kind of talent for Teltonika. Some of the groups presented their solutions to the panel of judges and the day was concluded.
The last day witnesses the balanced presentations from the remainder of the groups. The highlight of these presentations was then announced. The best creative solution by the group would be the ultimate winner of the contest and each team member of the winning group will earn an additional online “Diploma Certificate” from VIKO along with participating certification.
In conclusion, the idea of hosting such short BIPs is indeed a great simulation technique to generate creative solutions to real-time case studies. This also enables students to expand their horizons and learn to mix and adapt to a new environment in a short time such as a week. Furthermore, during the training, students learned about intercultural communication, management styles, leadership roles and expectations. The art of working, brainstorming, and generating real-time creative solutions in a team/group work environment was a great litmus test for each one of us. This further deepened the bond of sharing and co-learning from some of the most diverse groups one could only get to interact with during such forums. I made some new interesting friends from Vilnius and Riga.
Thank you ERASMUS + for hosting such BIPs and enabling us to be lifelong learner.