Innovation is crucial for higher education to ensure high-quality curricula that address the changing needs of students, labor markets, and society as a whole. Substantial amounts of resources and enthusiasm are devoted to innovations, but often they do not yield the desired changes. This may be due to unworkable goals, too much complexity, and a lack of resources to institutionalize the innovation. In many cases, innovations end up being less sustainable than expected or hoped for. In the long term, the disappointing revenues of innovations hamper the ability of higher education to remain future proof. Against the background of this need to increase the success of educational innovations, our colleague Klaartje van Genugten has explored the literature on innovations to reveal mechanisms that contribute to the sustainability of innovations. Her findings are synthesized in this report. They are particularly meaningful for directors of education programs, curriculum committees, educational consultants, and policy makers, who are generally in charge of defining the scope and set up of innovations. Her report offers a comprehensive view and provides food for thought on how we can strive for future-proof and sustainable innovations. I therefore recommend reading this report.
DOCUMENT
As the first order of business in the RIGHT project, each region produced and published its own regional report, using an underlying format developed in work package 3 in this project (Manickam & van Lieshout, 2018). The format and the regional work consisted of three parts. Part 1 is the Regional Innovation Ecosystems (RIE) mapping to provide a qualitative understanding of the region’s innovation ecosystem with regards to its Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3). This part is divided into a socio-economic and R&D profile mapping and a SWOT analysis. The RIE is an adaptation of a methodology and tool used by the eDIGIREGION Project. This part is to be filled in by desk research and consulting regional experts (through interviews and/or focus groups). This part is used for mapping the own regional ecosystems, information for the partners to get to know the other regions and to be able to identify relevant similarities and differences across the regions, which in turn, will be reported in part 1 of this trans-regional report. Regions themselves chose their own sector focus. One could focus on either energy of the blue sector, or both. Part 2 focuses on the innovation capacity and needs of SMEs from the chosen sector(s). The questions are adapted from a systemic study on cluster developments, in which an analysis model was developed (Manickam, 2018). It is based on (on average) six face-to-face interviews with SMEs from the sector. The outputs of these interviews were summarised into one template, in English, by each partner region to allow for joint analysis and comparison that is in turn reported in part 2 of this report Part 3 introduced the Job Forecasting and Skills Gaps mapping using the JOES templates as developed by van Lieshout et al. (2017). To gain an appreciation of the extent and nature of skills gap, each region was asked to analyse current and potential future labour demand, workforce, and discrepancies between the two, in up to 2 businesses. For obvious reasons (confidentiality and privacy), the JOEs will not be published separately, nor will their information be used in the report in a way that would be traceable to specific businesses. We will use exemplary information from them for illustrative purposes in Parts 1 and 2 of this report where relevant.
LINK
Regional development has often been described in economic terms, using economic indicators such as growth in GDP or demographic indicators such as net migration or employment. Some researchers argued that regional development should be understood broader, by including for example social indicators and living environment indicators . Recently, researchers have shown that policies directed towards regional development have broadened as well , but are also still evaluated within specific narratives or frameworks that often constitute the goals of the policy, for example the Keynesian framework favours increasing demand and favours the evaluation of policies aimed at exactly this. This self-constituting practice of an amalgam of related policies has also been referred to by Hall as a policy paradigm. Because policies are often evaluated within these policy paradigms it becomes difficult to decontextualise them, disentangle them and compare policies with each other.In this paper we propose to use a different, more quantitative and comparative method. By applying the above mentioned work from Andy Pike on numerous data sources from EUROSTAT and OECD, researchers from the PREMIUM_EU project developed a new framework that is measuring Regional Development (dubbed “R”) using economic, social and living environment indicators.MethodBy regarding this “R” (and individual indicators) as an outcome of public policies on the local, regional, national and international level and by analysing regional development policies on different levels from 2010 and onwards we believe it is possible to understand the impact of these policies in a more evidenced based sense, regardless of the above mentioned different types of narratives or frameworks.We started our research with an analysis from the OECD on the different types of regional development policies and the relations between different levels of government within countries. Based on this and literature research, we developed a framework with relevant topics for regional development policies and different levels of government.Based on the work of Moritz Schütz presented during the ERSA 2024 conference, we developed and employed a webcrawler to automatically download and summarise policies from municipalities, regional and national authorities and analyse the results of this exercise.Findings/resultsThe webcrawling and -mining exercise in combination with the new set of indicators will offer a much broader and more comprehensive view of the use and necessity of regional development policies. The findings will be discussed in dedicated policy labs with policymakers and researchers from the respective regions.Discussion/conclusionsBoth the new set of indicators and the analysis of the policies are not only innovative, but will also be viewed as speculative. Although we believe that a direct causal relationship between policies and the regional development will be hard to uncover, we do believe that this research will move the field of policy analysis forward, because it is more focused on evidence-based indicators and is based on larger sets of policies.
DOCUMENT
There has probably never been such an intense debate about the layout of the countryside as the one that is currently raging. There are serious concerns about the landscape, which is being rapidly transformed by urbanization and everything associated with this process, and not only in the Netherlands but also far beyond its borders. Everyone has something to say in this society-wide debate, from local to national governments, from environmental factions to the road-user's lobby, and from those who are professionally involved to concerned private parties. In many cases it is a battle between idealized images and economic models, between agricultural reality and urban park landscapes, between ecological concerns and mobility. This issue of OASE explores the potential significance of architectonic design for transformation processes on the regional scale. Besides considering the instruments that are available to the designer to fulfil this task, the authors also consider how the design can exercise a 'positive' influence on such processes. The various contributions shed light on the potential significance of territory in contemporary design practice and offer critical reflection on the topical discourse that has evolved over recent years.
DOCUMENT
This paper focuses on the topical and problematic area of social innovations. The aim of this paper is to develop an original approach to the allocation of social innovations, taking into account characteristics such as the degree of state participation, the scope of application, the type of initiations as well as the degree of novelty, which will be elaborated on further in this article. In order to achieve this goal, the forty-two most successful social innovations were identified and systematized. The results of this study demonstrated that 73.5% of social innovations are privately funded, most of them operating on an international level with a high degree of novelty. Moreover, 81% of all social innovations are civic initiatives. Social innovations play an important role in the growth of both developed and less developed countries alike as highlighted in our extensive analysis
DOCUMENT
This full paper works towards merging ‘frugality’ and ‘design thinking’ into a simplified framework for a workshop routine as a stepping stone for SMEs in developed countries to create and capture value of frugal innovations. Innovations which are born out of the notion that we can do more with less, or for less. This framework is aimed at reaching a specific group of SMEs, in this paper called the peloton of SMEs, a large group of SMEs which generally have lower growth ambitions and growth potential in comparison to the frontrunners. This group is often overlooked by (regional) governmental innovation programmes due to a primary focus on the same industry’s frontrunners. The framework was first tested with students, discussed with experts and eventually tested with SMEs from the Agribusiness sector in the Netherlands. Frugal Elements added to the design thinking process are; (a.) a Frugal Lens (b.) Frugal Business Model Patternsfor BMI (c.) Frugal leadership development (d.) Frugal Validation of the solution (e.) Frugal Intervention (limited time, limited theory, vertical learning community, practical tools). Although the first Pilot has been a succes in terms of helping participating SMEs to create innovations, more research is necessary for the design of a final framework which is expected to contribute to the frameworks that are currently available to SMEs in frugal and sustainable business modelling.
DOCUMENT
Background Literature on self-management innovations has studied their characteristics and position in healthcare systems. However, less attention has been paid to factors that contribute to successful implementation. This paper aims to answer the question: which factors play a role in a successful implementation of self-management health innovations? Methods We conducted a narrative review of academic literature to explore factors related to successful implementation of self-management health innovations. We further investigated the factors in a qualitative multiple case study to analyse their role in implementation success. Data were collected from nine self-management health projects in the Netherlands. Results Nine factors were found in the literature that foster the implementation of self-management health innovations: 1) involvement of end-users, 2) involvement of local and business partners, 3) involvement of stakeholders within the larger system, 4) tailoring of the innovation, 5) utilisation of multiple disciplines, 6) feedback on effectiveness, 7) availability of a feasible business model, 8) adaption to organisational changes, and 9) anticipation of changes required in the healthcare system. In the case studies, on average six of these factors could be identified. Three projects achieved a successful implementation of a self-management health innovation, but only in one case were all factors present. Conclusions For successful implementation of self-management health innovation projects, the factors identified in the literature are neither necessary nor sufficient. Therefore, it might be insightful to study how successful implementation works instead of solely focusing on the factors that could be helpful in this process.
LINK
Part I consists of an inventory of the current and upcoming policy, where we zoom in from European to national and from regional to local level. Additionally, we look at a number of quantitative accomplishments of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences. This preparatory research is performed as part of the European collaborative project Interreg Europe TraCS3.
DOCUMENT
It is important for the current small and medium sized companies to innovate and thereby still to be able to compete with the cheaper companies from the east. Within Fontys University a project has been started to develop an innovative education for its future curricula. More attention is paid to competence learning and 'learn to learn'-principles instead of cognitive learning. This has resulted in a so-called 'major-minor' system. In the Netherlands this system of education is commonly used at the Universities. The major, at Fontys, is a three-year primary education, which aims to develop the student's discipline. The minor are two education entities restricted, for the size of 30 ECTS, which students can choose. Within the Fontys University a study has started to develop a minor education on the topic "strategically decision-making on innovations in a SME". Fontys wants to train its students for this task in the SME, because it is assumed that many higher educated personnel will find work in the SME. Furthermore it is assumed that there is a growing need for higher educated personnel in possession of competences about strategic decision-making and implementing an innovative organisation. In the autumn of 2006, as a result of the present developments, a minor will be started on the topic 'strategically decision-making on innovations'. This paper describes the progress of the developments of the minor.
DOCUMENT
presentation on the WIREX annual congres of the EU Week of innovative Regions in which we discussed the pilots in the Northern Netherlands
DOCUMENT
