by Maria Manuel Serôdio and Mariana Vieira
What is Academic Days?
The goal of Academic Days is to share the knowledge of the universities inside the ESTIEM network.
It supports the personal and professional development of students across Europe willing to further compliment their curriculum. To achieve this, each Academic Days event provides participants with deep insights into a specific topic in which the organizing Local Group’s university has high expertise, and shows the participant how life is in a different faculty.
What changed?
Since the ultimate goal of every service is to provide the best possible to ESTIEMers, we have been restructuring for the last few months the concept and central team of Academic Days.
We have various teams working on the coordination and construction of the events with the Local Groups, on the collection and assembling of reports written by participants for the booklet of knowledge and on knowledge management and composition of support documents.
New Hot topics
Knowledge is the keyword in these events. What type of knowledge though? We want to provide students with topics that they are not provided in their faculties but that are extremely valuable for Industrial Engineering and Management students. From strategy to innovation, the next Academic Days events will bring a new perspective in many areas connected to the world of engineering and management, like marketing, strategic human resources, finances, strategic management and much more.
Booklet of Knowledge
The booklet of knowledge is composed of small reports written by the participants of the events and contains in a clear and graphical way what they learned there. This was created to provide a handout to all the participants but also to share it with the entire network.
The first “sail” with “Strategic Marketing — an efficient match to peak success”
Where did the idea come from?
The idea was born out of our curiosity about what is behind all the communications and relationships between companies and customers. Therefore, we combined strategy and marketing, which gave us Strategic Marketing.
Since the topic was more academic and the Local Group has very close contact with the professors specialized in the area, we believed that the format of Academic Days could provide ESTIEMers with a deep knowledge of the matter.
Breaking down Strategic Marketing
Marketing is defined as the effort to promote and advertise a product or item to be sold, considering the market knowledge and different advertising techniques, while Strategic Marketing is built on the market and customer knowledge to create plans to promote the company and its products.
In the technological era, there are some developments to keep an eye on, like artificial intelligence and the capability to support the client without human interaction. Other examples are social media and emotional marketing, where the presence of companies and their brands are equally important as the quality of the product sold.
Therefore, it is crucial for the organization to look at marketing on a strategic level and from different perspectives.
Why is this important for IEM?
“The engineer who becomes a manager, or a strategist, with a solid base in mathematics, will be able to make informed decisions and after doing important calculations about the gains to be had. Engineering is actually a very good base from which to, in the future, make important strategy decisions, as quantifying comes naturally to engineers.” (Oliveira, 2019)
For more insights into this article, check all about it in the booklet of the Academic Days in Aveiro.
The Academic Days Experience
“[…]I have had a chance to hear great examples of using Marketing in business. Lecturers were often using their own experience to help us understand better, which was very interesting and a great way for us to learn. […]”
Sanja Vujic, LG Belgrade
“During the Academic Days event, […] we aimed to share knowledge of real-life examples, in order to enrich the curricula and skill-set of participants. Participants who should, at the very least, know what they will have to do when they make the transition to senior leadership and, eventually, in some cases, to Chief Executive Officers (CEOs).” (Oliveira, 2019)
Manuel Oliveira, Mentor
Mentor Biography
Manuel Oliveira is an Assistant Professor at the University of Aveiro, where he lectures on Marketing and Strategy. He studied at the University of Porto (PhD in IEM), at Cardiff Business School (MBA in Management) and at Universidade Portucalense (undergraduate degree in Computer Science).
Credit: 58th issue of the ESTIEM Magazine
