The First-Ever Strategic Blockchain Management Course and Academic NFTs for Blockchain Guest Speakers

The University of Oulu Graduate School (Finland) Arctic Attitude Winter School 2021 offered the first-ever Strategic Blockchain Management course for doctoral students who are interested in blockchain technology from the strategic management perspective.

The University of Oulu Graduate School (Finland) Arctic Attitude Winter School 2021 offered the first-ever Strategic Blockchain Management course for doctoral students who are interested in blockchain technology from the strategic management perspective. This five-day intensive doctoral course was organized by Assistant Professor Dr. Teck Ming (Terence) Tan and co-teacher Tero Huhtala at the Oulu Busines School, from 15-19 March with twenty-seven registered participants across multiple disciplines, including Human Sciences, Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, and Technology and Natural Sciences. To enhance the quality of this blockchain doctoral course, the responsible teachers invited sixteen highly qualified guest speakers from Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Canada, and the US.

Upon completion of this 6 ETCS intensive course, the student could systematically analyze how blockchain technology serves as a strategic technology and compare it with different technology strategies. The student could assess the strategic value of using blockchain technologies from the perspectives of a firm, customers, competitors, and different stakeholders. Moreover, the course provides the students the knowledge to understand blockchains as platforms of innovation and value creation. The student could critically discuss the blockchain phenomenon and related business concepts (i.e., marketing, management, and organization). In addition, the student could analyze different capabilities and blockchain attributes (i.e., a trade-off between benefits) of current business operations, as well as discover opportunities for business transformation in the token/crypto and creation economy. Accordingly, the student could make technology-related decisions and apply blockchain as a strategic technology in business management. Students are also able to communicate and popularize research results and scientific knowledge to public audiences, such as asset tokenization – the underlying economic theory of blockchain economics.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the course was conducted online via multiple digital learning tools, such as the Zoom conference platform, Moodle learning management system, and Google Jamboard. Students put their effort and commitment into the course by demonstrating their engagement with the course content and discussions and the speakers. Each morning, the teachers organized a 45-minute discussion of how the students’ perceptions about blockchain had changed or evolved from the previous day's lectures. Such practice triggered students to express and exchange their new views for strategic blockchain management. Example of reflections throughout the course weeks as follows:

Student reflections of the doctoral blockchain course in winter 2021

The first-ever academic NFTs

To further highlight, the responsible teacher created the first-ever memorabilia in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to sixteen guest speakers. An NFT is a unit of data on a blockchain that represents a unique and immutable digital item. A single-minted of 19 digital arts that associate with the Finnish Doctoral Hat and Sword, which serve as a symbol of liberty, freedom of research, and the scientists’ fight for what they have found to be good, right, and true in rigorous research. The collectible digital arts are available on Opensea.io under DrBlock collection. Thus, the first-ever Strategic Blockchain Management brand name is now recorded on the blockchain network and the first-ever academic NFTs could be tradable in the marketplace to build the awareness of the strategic perspective of blockchain management.

Description of the academic NFT from top to bottom: antlers are a Finnish symbol, Finnish doctoral hat, lyre in the middle of the hat represents the focus on the decentralization philosophy of blockchain, Blockhead symbolizes blockchain course, unique guest speaker code using Wingdings font, roly-poly toy shape symbolizes a strong research determination and never falling down/giving up, Finnish doctoral sword on the hip and a unique guest speaker’s clothing pattern in the bottom.

Owners of the digital arts

  • #1/19 = Teck Ming (Terence) Tan, University of Oulu, Finland (responsible teacher)
  • #2/19 = Tero Huhtala, University of Oulu, Finland (co-teacher)
  • #3/19 = Johannes Sedlmeir, University of Bayreuth, Germany (Guest lecture title: Challenges of blockchain technology in application and potential solutions)
  • #4/19 = Shaun Deanesh, PRA Group (Nasdaq: PRAA), Norway (Guest lecture title: DeFi and risk management)
  • #5/19 = Petri Ahokangas, University of Oulu, Finland (Guest lecture title: Blockchain and future business)
  • #6/19 = Tomi Dahlberg, DBE Core Ltd./Blockchain Forum/University of Turku, Finland (Guest lecture title: The use of Blockchain and the UBL//PEPPOL, ISO process and data model standard, to automate the exchange of supply chain and logistics data between enterprises)
  • #7/19 = Felix Bekemeier, University of Basel, Switzerland (Guest lecture title: Aligning economic incentives in the blockchain space: Specific views on crypto economics)
  • #8/19 = Jari Salo, University of Helsinki, Finland (Guest lecture title: Future of blockchain research in business studies)
  • #9/19 = Markus Lehtonen, Helsinki Blockchain Center, Finland (Guest lecture title: The roles of Helsinki blockchain center)
  • #10/19 = Marika Iivari, University of Oulu, Finland (Guest lecture title: Digitalization and the user Experience)
  • #11/19 = John G. Keogh, Shantalla Inc, Canada (Guest lecture title: Transparency and trust in global supply ecosystem: The good, bad, and the ugly)
  • #12/19 = Juha Partala, University of Oulu, Finland (Guest lecture title: The cryptographic blocks building)
  • #13/19 = Destan Kirimhan, University of South Carolina, US (Guest lecture title: Finance research on blockchain)
  • #14/19 = Constantin Ketz, ITSA International Token Standardization Association, Germany (Guest lecture title: Market standards for global token markets)
  • #15/19 = Kimmo Halunen, University of Oulu, Finland (Guest lecture title: Practical use cases for smart contracts)
  • #16/19 = Dominique Lepore, University of Macerata, Italy (Guest lecture title: Blockchain for supply chain management and as a marketing lever for Made in Italy products)
  • #17/19 = Tan Gürpinar, TU Dortmund University, Germany (Guest lecture title: Blockchain in supply chain management)
  • #18/19 = Jonas Gross, Frankfurt School Blockchain Center, Germany (Guest lecture title: Insights into the digital euro by the ECB)
  • #19/19 = The Designer GS, Finland

“We highly appreciate our guest speakers’ ideas, input, interactions, and enthusiasm in assisting us to deliver valuable blockchain content to our course participants, thus using NFTs is the most creative and suitable method to thank them in a blockchain-way and to build the awareness of the strategic perspective of blockchain management. Personally, I think it is a fun and cool idea although people from the crypto space might not be interested in our first-ever academic NTFs,” said Dr. Tan. In this regard, each speaker will receive 70 percent of the initial sale from the net profit, whereas 30 percent is credited to Designer GS for her creativity. Eight percent art loyalties plan (share equally among the speaker and the Designer GS) is included for all subsequent transactions of the digital art.