Random incidents may lead to new innovations, as happened with Quum International. The story of Quum started in 2008 when Petri Ahokangas was asked to ramp up a new major, International Business, in the Oulu Business School. Dr. Ahokangas gathered a group of people with international business experience to develop this new program – with a close cooperation with local firms expanding in international markets. Cooperation revealed an urgent need to enhance and support traditional consulting, that is, personal interviews, transcriptions, and objective suggestions.

The whole group, Petri Ahokangas, Sauli Pajari, Lauri Haapanen, Marjut Uusitalo, and Pertti Paakkolanvaara, had an extensive experience in international business and internationalizing firms. Such a unique combination of knowledge and praxis in international sales management, business management, process development, human resource management, quality system development, and product management, resulted in the Quum analysis in 2009. This first version received highly positive feedback from both consultants and consultants’ target firms. Hence, the team decided to set up a university spin-off firm – Quum International. Quum is Latin and means ‘along with' or ‘be with’.

Newly established firm updated the Quum analysis as a web-based analysis tool, released in 2010. Since then, Quum has been updating and improving the tool on a yearly basis. Since the beginning, numerous firms, research and education institutions have benefitted from the Quum analysis. The latest version in 2021 can be tailored by consultants, yet still containing the original idea of automated analysis and reports