Tua Björklund

Assistant Professor, DSc Tua Björklund is one of the co-founders of Aalto Design Factory, a multidisciplinary experimentation platform in Aalto University. Having grown into a network of over 35 platforms across the globe, the Design Factory leverages design approaches to promote innovation across disciplines and academia and industry alike.  

Björklund leads a multidisciplinary team enhancing impact through co-creation by combining research, training and development. Based on interviews and collaboration with over 250 organizations, her research focuses on design expertise, adopting design thinking in organizations and novel approaches to innovation. Her current projects include for example Design+Sustainability, investigating design pathways for advancing sustainable value creation in organizations, and the EU initiative ATTRACT, leveraging design in developing societal applications for technological innovations. Björklund’s work has been published in leading design, entrepreneurship, leadership and educational research journals. 

She teaches design thinking and innovation practices at different schools of Aalto University and is a sought-after trainer at Aalto Executive Education. In addition to Aalto, Björklund has worked at the Stanford University Center for Design Research in the USA. She holds a DSc degree in industrial engineering and management from Aalto University and a MA degree in cognitive science from the University of Helsinki.