Enhancing global innovation: MSc collaboration with EM Lyon continues

From early January to the end of March, Oulu Business School proudly welcomes a special group of exchange students. Twenty MSc students from EM Lyon are here to experience the Finnish winter while taking courses focused on innovation and entrepreneurship. Their home institution in France offers the MSc programme in Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship. As part of this programme, students spend the second term of their first year exploring entrepreneurship ecosystems in diverse locations such as Oulu, Finland, and Ho Chi Minh City & Hanoi, Vietnam.
A group of EM Lyon MSc students visiting Nokia Oulu premises during their three-month study period in February 2025.
EM Lyon MSc students visiting Nokia campus in Oulu in February 2025.

Oulu Business School (OBS) is proud to be a partner in this programme for the second consecutive year. Throughout their three-month exchange, students immerse themselves in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of the Oulu region by visiting key sites. These include the Startup Station at BusinessOulu, the Printocent cluster for printed electronics and intelligence at VTT Research Centre, the OuluHealth ecosystem via the OYS TestLab at Oulu University Hospital, the Nokia Over-the-air TestLab, and a circular economy and sustainability tour to local companies and the Ii municipality. A highlight of the exchange is the Polar Bear Pitching event in late February, providing students with a unique opportunity to engage with start-ups and the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem on a global scale while seeing start-ups pitching from an ice-hole, "avanto".

This year’s diverse cohort includes students from France, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, and Italy. They began their programme with a semester in Lyon, followed by a semester split between Oulu and Ho Chi Minh City & Hanoi, Vietnam. The second year of the programme includes an internship and thesis work. The programme aims to equip students with the skills to become visionary leaders, capable of developing innovative entrepreneurial solutions that make a lasting societal impact and enhance their ability to work in multicultural teams globally.

The collaboration between OBS and EM Lyon began in autumn 2007, when an OBS Executive Education delegate first visited EM Lyon to establish ties. By spring 2008, the course “Building and Leading Multi-Cultural Teams” was introduced into the OBS EMBA programme. Since then, OBS EMBA students have visited EM Lyon annually for this course. Over the years, this collaboration has flourished, encompassing various initiatives. These include EM Lyon’s International MBA programme’s annual three-day visits to Oulu from 2010 to 2019 for the “Business the Nordic Way” content, teacher exchanges (particularly from EM Lyon to OBS for economics content in the OBS full-time MBA programme from 2008 to 2013), and a formal Erasmus exchange agreement with actual student mobility starting in 2018.

We eagerly anticipate further developing our collaboration with such a distinguished partner.

Last updated: 6.2.2025