The dominant curricular model in business education has been subject to much critique. The main criticism is that as the traditional study environment is extremely fragmented, from a pedagogical leadership perspective, it is difficult to coordinate the efforts of highly autonomous faculty members and from the students’ perspective, to integrate one’s learning into a meaningful whole. It can also be argued that disciplined based programmes do not prepare students adequately for a rapidly changing world. The purpose of this study is to present and discuss a viable alternative developed in the 1990s by Team Academy in Finland: the fully integrated cooperative-based project curriculum, which has recently been adopted in many parts of the world. In the beginning of study, student teams of 20 establish a cooperative (i.e., a small business) of their own. Operating a coop provides opportunities for profit making and authentic learning. Theoretically, there is a triple focus coined as trialogical learning by Hakkarainen and Paavola (2007): the focus is not just on (1) learners and knowledge acquisition, nor (2) the social processes, but also on (3) a third distinct ele¬ment, namely the creative process of jointly developing “objects” such as processes, practices, networks, concepts, patents, or even small businesses, which are intended for subsequent use outside the educational setting. In practice, study programmes following a coop-based project curriculum do not have students (but team entrepreneurs), classrooms (but an open plan office), teachers (but coaches), simulations (but real business), nor control (but self-organization). Instead of completing courses, the students engage in three learning activities: readings, mandatory dialogue sessions (e.g., 2 x 4 hrs / week) together with one’s coop fellows referred to as “team” and coach, and projects. We focus on a theoretical analysis of the Team Academy coop-based project curriculum from the perspective of trialogical learning.

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