The courses are part of ISE Graduate Professional Development Programme and the idea behind the courses is to help companies and employees gain more knowledge about how to develop more sustainable services that create value for customers. The initiative is led by the Service Research Center (CTF) at Karlstad University. The goal is to boost the competence of the Swedish business sector and contribute to lifelong learning.
This autumn, professionals are offered the opportunity to further their competence with new courses in service design and servitisation, and at the beginning of next year, a new course focusing on the environment and sustainable development will also be offered.
The courses are part of the Graduate Professional Development Programme ISE (Improving value creation through service education) and are aimed at professionals who want to enhance their skills and work at the same time.
From research to practice
– Today, professionals constantly need to further their professional development in order to acquire the skills that companies demand, says programme coordinator, Carolina Camén, researcher and senior lecturer in business administration. Here at CTF, we can contribute by offering short courses that are completely free of charge.
One of the previous course participants, Henrik Bojö, former employee of Volvo Group and now working at Trapeze Group, took the course Introduction to servitization.
– The course provides a good theoretical basis with tools and models for servitization and I use several models from the course in my daily work. The course offers an exchange of experiences with other course participants, moderated by service professionals, says Henrik Bojö.
Course coordinator, Maria Åkesson, is pleased with the positive response to the introductory course and is looking forward to the new course Servitization – from theory to practice, which starts in November, where participants will look at how an expanded service offering can create value for customers and their own business.
– The idea is that the participants create a plan for how to incorporate servitization in their business, and they get to work on designing their plan continuously throughout the course, says Maria Åkesson.
Exchange of experiences – an important part of our courses
Since the start in 2020, 17 courses have been developed based on CTF’s interdisciplinary research and expertise. Professionals are offered the opportunity to develop their competence in service and business development, digitalisation and other areas linked to CTF’s research. Companies and organisations have been involved both in the development work as well as through guest lectures and discussion seminars.
Therese-Marie Hall, Länsförsäkringar Värmland, took the course Digitalisation and digital transformation in organisations.
– I truly recommend this course. It has given me tools and models to systematically work with digitalisation as well as a greater understanding of what is required to reach a digitalisation goal. I’ve learned about examples of success and pitfalls to avoid in the digitalisation process, says Therese-Marie Hall.
Course coordinator, Linda Bergkvist, is happy about the positive outcome, which shows that the knowledge and tools acquired in the course is something that the participants can apply in their own digitalisation process. Tools that are in demand are models and methodological support for working systematically with digitalisation and digital transformation.
– An important part of our courses is the exchange of knowledge and experiences between the participants, for example through discussion seminars. The content of the seminars is partly created by the participants themselves by applying theoretical concepts and models to their own experiences, says Linda Bergkvist.
ISE Graduate Professional Development Programme is halfway there
ISE is funded by the Knowledge Foundation until August 2025. Almost the entire range of courses is now in place and several courses are held for the second or third time.
– We offer courses continuously throughout the year and are now developing the final courses of our course catalogue, says Carolina Camén. In addition to course development, we are constantly working on quality improvements, internal and external collaboration, as well as promoting our courses to reach even more professionals.
• Lean more at: kau.se/ise
The ISE courses are offered as distance learning courses at Master’s level and award 5 credits over a period of 10–14 weeks. Teaching is held via Zoom and pre-recorded lectures where participants analyse and discuss key concepts, models and case studies linked to their own expertise and professional field.
