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.
Change has become continuous, and innovation is a primary approach for hospitality, i.e., hotel companies, to become or remain economically viable and sustainable. An increasing number of management researchers are paying more attention to workplace rather than technological innovation. This study investigates workplace innovation in the Dutch hotel industry, in three- and four-star hotels in the Netherlands, by comparing them to other industries. Two samples were questioned using the Workplace Innovation survey created by the Dutch Network of Social Innovation (NSI). The first was conducted in the hospitality industry, and these data were compared with data collected in a sample of other industries. Results suggest that greater strategic orientation on workplace innovation and talent development has a positive influence on four factors of organizational performance. Greater internal rates of change, the ability to self-organize, and investment in knowledge also had positive influences on three of the factors—growth in revenue, sustainability, and absenteeism. Results also suggest that the hospitality industry has lower workplace innovation than other industries. However, no recent research has assessed to what degree the hospitality industry fosters workplace innovation, especially in the Netherlands. Next to that, only few studies have examined management in the Dutch hotel industry, how workplace innovation is used there, and whether it improves practices.
The paper arguments that a design approach will be essential to the future of e-democracy and e-governance. This development is driven at the intersection of three fields: democracy, information technology and design. Developments in these fields will result in a new scale, new complexity and demands for new quality of democracy solutions. Design is essential to answer these new challenges. The article identifies a new generation of design thinking as a distinct new voice in the development of e-democracy and describes some of the consequences for democracy and governance. It argues that, to be able to design new solutions for e-democracy successfully, current approaches may be too narrow and a broader critical reflection is necessary for both designers and other stakeholders in the process.
In recent years, ArtEZ has worked on a broadly supported strategic research agenda on the themes New Ecologies of Matter (ecological challenges), Social Equity (social-societal issues), (Un)Learning Practices (educational innovations) and (Non)CybernEtic Fabric (technological developments). Building on these strategic themes, the ArtEZ Research Collective as developed an international research strategy to become a valuable partner in the relevant Horizon Europe (HEU) areas of Environment, Industry and Social science and humanities. With its specific knowledge position and approach from arts and creativity, ArtEZ is convinced that it can play a distinctive role in European consortia to tackle various challenges in these areas, in particular from the perspective and research topics of the professorships Fashion and Tactical Design. To achieve its ambitions and goals in its targeted research topics, ArtEZ is convinced that a combination of international connections and local applications is key for successful impact. Building upon existing relations and extending the international research position requires extra efforts, e.g., by developing a strong international framework of state-of-the-art research results, impacts and ambitions. Therefore ArtEZ needs to (further) build on both its international network and its supportive infrastructure. With this proposal ArtEZ is presenting its goals and efforts to work on its international recognition as a valuable research partner, and to broaden its international network in cutting-edge research and other stakeholders. With regards to its supporting infrastructure, ArtEZ has the ambition to expand the impact of the Subsidy Desk to become a professional partner to the professorships. This approach requires a further professionalization and extension of both the Subsidy Desk organization and its services, and developing and complementing skills, expertise and competences to comply to the European requirements.
TOURBAN objective is to spearhead a transnational and cross-sectoral movement towards tourism sustainability in urban areas across Europe, leveraging SME capacities and skills to uptake best practices and develop innovative solutions that make them both more sustainable and competitive. It will do so by tackling current urban tourism challenges in an era of increasing tourism visitor pressure, acting in European cities such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Dubrovnik, Kiel, Budapest and Tallinn. To achieve the objective, TOURBAN will share knowledge on sustainability strategies and the advantages of adopting sustainable solutions and practices, including EU/internationally recognised certificates and labels (e.g. EU Eco Label, EMAS) and circular economy models. These will be based on case studies and stories from SMEs and other frontrunners in sustainability.The project will share this practical knowledge through highly interactive training workshops and peer-to-peer sessions. Another core element of the project is cross-sector knowledge exchange and collaboration. In addition, more intensive support services will be delivered so that the tourism SMEs can effectively adopt sustainability strategies and seek additional financing. In this, financial support will be provided on the basis of a selection process under a competitive Call for Proposals launched by the Sustainable Urban Tourism Acceleration Programme. In this action, TOURBAN will engage around 70 SMEs from 7 different countries (NL, ES, DK, HR, DE, HU and EE) in a 12-month programme. To drive successful outcomes, the partnership gathers expertise in a wide range of topics related to tourism sustainability and can draw on years of practical experience in incubation, acceleration and SME developmentPartners:Breda University of Applied Sciences (Breda - The Netherlands), Barcelona Chamber of Commerce (Barcelona - Spain), B. Link Barcelona Strategic Projects (Barcelona - Spain), The Institute for Tourism Research in Northern Europe (Kiel - Germany), Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Tallinn - Estonia), City of Dubrovnik Development Agency (Dubrovnik - Croatia), Creative Business Network (Copenhagen - Denmark), VIMOSZ Hungarian Hospitality Employers’ Association (Budapest - Hungary).
Breda University of Applied Sciences, Master Imagineering programme students and FHGR, University of Graubuenden, Chur, students from the Digital Business Management, Bachelor programme follow a joint module that has three specific virtual components of interaction: the Experience Design Course, he Ideation Block (Design Hackathon) and the Sustainability and Impact generation (Implementation phase). Further on the joint interaction consists of: joint online lectures and workshops (on a weekly basis); joint online assignments (on a bi-weekly basis) supported by meet-up’s and consultancy sessions and joint online collaborative creative sessions and presentations (regularly).The content that the International Virtual Collaboration encompasses is: The VUCA world we are currently living in (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). Tools to innovate and flourish within and beyond VUCA; Experience and Transformation design through business and social canvas modeling; Innovation games and Appreciative Inquiry and Social and business impact generation and assessment.The final joint output that the students (in groups) create (the project is running until mid-January 2023 and then analysis and data processing until March 2023) will be a design concept/model for a specific case/organization with strategic implementation plan and recommendation report.
