Digital service need indicator CREAR recognised in the Quality Innovation Award competition

Quality Innovation Award is a recognised international innovation competition organised annually to increase the number and improve the quality of innovations. This year, the digital service need indicator CREAR, which was developed in the ESF-funded Resilience and Future belief project (2018–2020) coordinated by Laurea, was awarded with an honourable mention. 

CREAR received an honourable mention in the Education Sector Innovations category of the Quality Innovation Award 2021 competition. The main awards were granted to Peikko Group’s BOLDA column shoe in the Business Innovations category for large companies and Metsä Spring Ltd’s textile fibre Kuura in the Potential Innovations category. This year, honourable mentions were granted in two categories. In addition to CREAR, an honourable mention was received by Elenia Network Plc’s EleniaGO in the Business Innovations category for large companies.

The awards of the 2021 competition were handed out in Excellence Finland’s Quality Day event organised on Thursday 11 November.

Quality Innovation Award is a recognised international innovation competition organised annually to increase the number and improve the quality of innovations. The competition highlights new innovations and assesses them based on novelty value, usability, customer-orientation and productivity. In Finland, the competition is organised by the Finnish Quality Association. 

A tool for teachers, instructors and other experts at educational institutions

CREAR is a digital service need assessment tool developed to support the customer work of guidance, teaching and student welfare personnel. CREAR acts as an early detection tool that can be used to comprehensively examine an individual’s situation in life. Based on the results obtained from CREAR, the guided person’s potential need for guidance and other support can be evaluated, enabling the provision of timely, customer-oriented assistance.  

A necessary innovation promoting social sustainable development

Participating innovations in the Quality Innovation Award competition are assessed and provided with feedback to enable further development. The competition jury’s feedback describes CREAR as the result of systematic development. It states that CREAR has been proven a necessary assessment tool that increases social sustainable development. 

- The honorary mention granted to CREAR is a considerable recognition to Laurea and its partners that participated in developing the tool. According to the prestigious jury of experts, we have clearly succeeded in creating a functional digital tool that has future potential, says Mika Launikari, Career Guidance and Knowledge Development Expert at Laurea.  
- The positive feedback we received encourages us to continue our efforts to further develop CREAR.

Further reading on the CREAR assessment tool and its use is available in a handbook published by Laurea in Finnish, Swedish and English. Training on using the assessment tool will be made available through online MOOC courses offered at Laurea’s Open University of Applied Sciences as of early 2022.

See the CREAR handbook.

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