Futures Designer Minna Koskelo is Laurea's alumna of the year

Since 2008, the Alumni of the Year Award has been awarded at Laurea University of Applied Sciences to a particularly distinguished alumnus or alumna whose activities draw positive attention on the Laurea community and education. In 2022, this recognition is awarded to Futures Designer Minna Koskelo, who has completed both a bachelor’s degree and a master's degree at Laurea. 

Minna Koskelo, who is Laurea's alumna of the year, is an expert in futures design. In 2017, they founded their company 11Helsinki Oy that helps companies identify and seize future opportunities. 

Koskelo has also published a book titled Tehtävänä tulevaisuus – tulevaisuusmuotoilu päätöksenteossa (futures design in decision-making) in 2021. Koskelo has established the association Futures Finland (in Finnish), which promotes future-oriented thinking, and they are also a founding member of Futures Day, which was rewarded as a national foresight act in 2019. They also act as a speaker and lecturer and teach futures design to Laurea's Master's degree students. 

- I am very touched to be the alumna of the year, says Minna Koskelo. 

- Laurea has many graduates, each of whom works in an important field. This is why it is a pleasure and an honour to be chosen. 

From service design studies to futures design

For the first time, Minna Koskelo began their studies at Laurea in 1999 – the then Espoo-Vantaa University of Applied Sciences – and graduated as a Bachelor of Business Administration in 2004 from the Leppävaara campus. In 2011, they returned to the master’s degree programme in Service Innovation and Design in English, from which they graduated in 2013. 

Even before the master’s studies, they had worked in foresight and customer understanding, but the studies in service design were a significant step towards futures design,

- Service design provided me with a framework, methods and tools for developing customer understanding, but, in my opinion, service design lacked the perspectives of foresight and future research, Koskelo says. 

During the master’s degree studies, they became interested in combining foresight and design thinking into a framework together with a student colleague Anu Nousiainen. Together with Laurea's current Vice President Katri Ojasalo, they wrote an article on the use of foresight in service design.

- I have continued this work that I began in my master’s degree studies, says Koskelo. 

‘Future does not happen, it is made’

Minna Koskelo and Anu Nousiainen have taught foresight at Laurea in 2013-2019. At that time, they launched a trend library. It displays trend cards developed by master’s degree students over the years that are short descriptions of alternative futures. 

When they teach the current master’s degree students futures design and foresight competence, Koskelo wants to emphasise the active role of every person as a designer of the future,

- Future does not happen, it is made. Every one of us makes a future every day, Koskelo says.

- In futures design, my passion is to help individuals and communities become aware of alternative futures and seize the opportunities offered by the future.