The promotor was Prof. Erik Jan Hultink and copromotors Dr Ellis van den Hende en Dr R. van der Lugt. The title of this dissertation is Armchair travelling the innovation journey. ‘Armchair travelling’ is an expression for travelling to another place, in the comfort of one’s own place. ‘The innovation journey’ is the metaphor Van de Ven and colleagues (1999) have used for travelling the uncharted river of innovation, the highly unpredictable and uncontrollable process of innovation. This research study began with a brief remark from an innovation project leader who sighed after a long and rough journey: ‘had I known this ahead of time…’. From wondering ‘what could he have known ahead of time?’ the immediate question arose: how do such innovation journeys develop? How do other innovation project leaders lead the innovation journey? And could I find examples of studies about these experiences from an innovation project leader’s perspective that could have helped the sighing innovation project leader to have known at least some of the challenges ahead of time? This dissertation is the result of that quest, as we do know relatively little how this process of the innovation project leader unfolds over time. The aim of this study is to increase our understanding of how innovation project leaders lead their innovation journeys over time, and to capture those experiences that could be a source for others to learn from and to be better prepared. This research project takes a process approach. Such an approach is different from a variance study. Process thinking takes into account how and why things – people, organizations, strategies, environments – change, act and evolve over time, expressed by Andrew Pettigrew (1992, p.10) as catching “reality in flight”.
MULTIFILE
Nowadays companies need higher educated engineers to develop their competences to enable them to innovate. This innovation competence is seen as a remedy for the minor profitable business they do during the financial crises. Innovation is an element to be developed on the one hand for big companies as well as for small-and-medium sized companies through Europe to overcome this crisis. The higher education can be seen as an institution where youngsters, coming from secondary schools, who choose to learn at higher education to realize their dream, what they like to become in the professional world. The tasks of the Universities of applied Sciences are to prepare these youngsters to become starting engineers doing their job well in the companies. Companies work for a market, trying to manufacture products which customers are willing to pay for. They ask competent employees helping achieving this goal. It is important these companies inform the Universities of applied Sciences in order to modify their educational program in such a way that the graduated engineers are learning the latest knowledge and techniques, which they need to know doing their job well. The Universities of applied Sciences of Oulu (Finland) and Fontys Eindhoven (The Netherlands) are working together to experience possibilities to qualify their students on innovation development in an international setting. In the so-called: ‘Invention Project’, students are motivated to find their own invention, to design it, to prepare this idea for prototyping and to really manufacture it. Organizing the project, special attention is given to communication protocol between students and also between teachers. Students have meetings on Thursday every week through Internet connection with the communication program OPTIMA, which is provided by the Oulu University. Not only the time difference between Finland and the Netherlands is an issue to be organized also effective protocols how to provide each other relevant information and also how to make in an effective way decisions are issues. In the paper the writers will present opinions of students, teachers and also companies in both regions of Oulu and Eindhoven on the effectiveness of this project reaching the goal students get more experienced to set up innovative projects in an international setting. The writers think this is an important and needed competence for nowadays young engineers to be able to create lucrative inventions for companies where they are going to work for. In the paper the writers also present the experiences of the supervising conditions during the project. The information found will lead to success-factors and do’s and don’ts for future projects with international collaboration.
DOCUMENT
Nowadays companies need higher educated engineers to develop their competences to enable them to innovate. This innovation competence is seen as a remedy for the minor profitable business they do during the financial crises. Innovation is an element to be developed on the one hand for big companies as well as for small-and-medium sized companies through Europe to overcome this crisis. The higher education can be seen as an institution where youngsters, coming from secondary schools, who choose to learn at higher education to realize their dream, what they like to become in the professional world. The tasks of the Universities of applied Sciences are to prepare these youngsters to become starting engineers doing their job well in the companies. Companies work for a market, trying to manufacture products which customers are willing to pay for. They ask competent employees helping achieving this goal. It is important these companies inform the Universities of applied Sciences in order to modify their educational program in such a way that the graduated engineers are learning the latest knowledge and techniques, which they need to know doing their job well. The Universities of applied Sciences of Oulu (Finland) and Fontys Eindhoven (The Netherlands) are working together to experience possibilities to qualify their students on innovation development in an international setting. In the socalled: ‘Invention Project’, students are motivated to find their own invention, to design it, to prepare this idea for prototyping and to really manufacture it. Organizing the project, special attention is given to communication protocol between students and also between teachers. Students have meetings on Thursday every week through Internet connection with the communication program OPTIMA, which is provided by the Oulu University. Not only the time difference between Finland and the Netherlands is an issue to be organized also effective protocols how to provide each other relevant information and also how to make in an effective way decisions are issues. In the paper the writers will present opinions of students, teachers and also companies in both regions of Oulu and Eindhoven on the effectiveness of this project reaching the goal students get more experienced to set up innovative projects in an international setting. The writers think this is an important and needed competence for nowadays young engineers to be able to create lucrative inventions for companies where they are going to work for. In the paper the writers also present the experiences of the supervising conditions during the project. The information found will lead to successfactors and do’s and don’ts for future projects with international collaboration.
DOCUMENT
Energy transition is key to achieving a sustainable future. In this transition, an often neglected pillar is raising awareness and educating youth on the benefits, complexities, and urgency of renewable energy supply and energy efficiency. The Master Energy for Society, and particularly the course “Society in Transition”, aims at providing a first overview on the urgency and complexities of the energy transition. However, educating on the energy transition brings challenges: it is a complex topic to understand for students, especially when they have diverse backgrounds. In the last years we have seen a growing interest in the use of gamification approaches in higher institutions. While most practices have been related to digital gaming approaches, there is a new trend: escape rooms. The intended output and proposed innovation is therefore the development and application of an escape room on energy transition to increase knowledge and raise motivation among our students by addressing both hard and soft skills in an innovative and original way. This project is interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary and transdisciplinary due to the complexity of the topic; it consists of three different stages, including evaluation, and requires the involvement of students and colleagues from the master program. We are confident that this proposed innovation can lead to an improvement, based on relevant literature and previous experiences in other institutions, and has the potential to be successfully implemented in other higher education institutions in The Netherlands.
Digital innovations in the field of immersive Augmented Reality (AR) can be a solution to offer adults who are mentally, physically or financially unable to attend sporting events such as premier league football a stadium and match experience. This allows them to continue to connect with their social networks. In the intended project, AR content will be further developed with the aim of evoking the stadium experience of home matches as much as possible. The extent to which AR enriches the experience is then tested in an experiment, in which the experience of a football match with and without AR enrichment is measured in a stadium setting and in a home setting. The experience is measured with physiological signals. In addition, a subjective experience measure is also being developed and benchmarked (the experience impact score). Societal issueInclusion and health: The joint experience of (top) sports competitions forms a platform for vulnerable adults, with a limited social capital, to build up and maintain the social networks that are so necessary for them. AR to fight against social isolation and loneliness.
This project develops a European network for transdisciplinary innovation in artistic engagement as a catalyst for societal transformation, focusing on immersive art. It responds to the professionals in the field’s call for research into immersive art’s unique capacity to ‘move’ people through its multisensory, technosocial qualities towards collective change. The project brings together experts leading state-of-the-art research and practice in related fields with an aim to develop trajectories for artistic, methodological, and conceptual innovation for societal transformation. The nascent field of immersive art, including its potential impact on society, has been identified as a priority research area on all local-to-EU levels, but often suffers from the common (mis)perception as being technological spectacle prioritising entertainment values. Many practitioners create immersive art to enable novel forms of creative engagement to address societal issues and enact change, but have difficulty gaining recognition and support for this endeavour. A critical challenge is the lack of knowledge about how their predominantly sensuous and aesthetic experience actually lead to collective change, which remains unrecognised in the current systems of impact evaluation predicated on quantitative analysis. Recent psychological insights on awe as a profoundly transformative emotion signals a possibility to address this challenge, offering a new way to make sense of the transformational effect of directly interacting with such affective qualities of immersive art. In parallel, there is a renewed interest in the practice of cultural mediation, which brings together different stakeholders to facilitate negotiation towards collective change in diverse domains of civic life, often through creative engagements. Our project forms strategic grounds for transdisciplinary research at the intersection between these two developments. We bring together experts in immersive art, psychology, cultural mediation, digital humanities, and design across Europe to explore: How can awe-experiences be enacted in immersive art and be extended towards societal transformation?
