Uit het vooronderzoekvan het project Duurzamelearning communities: Oogstenin de Greenportblijkt dat12 factorenhierbijvan belangrijk zijn. Deze succesfactoren staan centraal in de interactieve tool Seeds of Innovation. Ook komen uit het vooronderzoek, aangevuld met inzichten uit de literatuur en tips om de samenwerking door te ontwikkelen en meer gebruik te maken van de opbrengsten 12 succesfactoren met toelichting, belangrijkste bevindingen en tips voor ‘hoe nu verder’, Poster, Walk through, De app die learning communities helptde samenwerkingnaareenhogerplan te tillenen innovatieveopbrengstenoptimaalte benutten.
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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”.
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With Fontys' new educational developments we became part of the project called 'BILOBA'. The principal outlines of this new education are based on developing competences, communication by ICT and setting up a major-minor educational system. Fontys has already developed 40 minors with topics related to several areas from institutes' backgrounds. One of the minor courses is 'Strategic Innovation'. The main goal of this minor is to make students competent to contribute to innovation in the SME's. Students will acquire relevant knowledge as well as relevant competences for developing innovation in companies. The outline of the minor is 50 % knowledge development and 50% project work, where the knowledge is used in practice. New in the project is the so-called 'Innovation Simulator'. In this simulator as part of the project students will be confronted with the real world of initiating innovation in the context of a real company. Role-play is an important element to this simulator. We need to learn more about this approach. We have done some evaluations during the spring of 2007 and have found some imperfections, which will be changed in June of 2007/2008 as an outcome of an evaluation with all of the participants.
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For their technological sustainability innovations to become successful, entrepreneurs can strategically shape the technological field in which they are involved. The technological innovation systems (TISs) literature has generated valuable insights into the processes which need to be stimulated for the successful development and implementation of innovative sustainability technologies. To explore the applicability of the TIS framework from the perspective of entrepreneurs, we conducted a case study in the Dutch smart grids sector. We found that the TIS framework generally matches the perspectives of entrepreneurs. For its use by entrepreneurs, we suggest a slight adaptation of this framework. The process ‘Market formation’ needs to be divided into processes that are driven by the government and processes that are driven by entrepreneurs. There should be a greater emphasis on collaborative marketing, on changing user behaviour and preferences and on the development of fair and feasible business models.
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Digital innovation in education – as in any other sector – is not only about developing and implementing novel ideas, but also about having these ideas effectively used as well as widely accepted and adopted, so that many students can benefit from innovations improving education. Effectiveness, transferability and scalability cannot be added afterwards; it must be integrated from the start in the design, development and implementation processes, as is proposed in the movement towards evidence-informed practice (EIP). The impact an educational innovation has on the values of various stakeholders is often overlooked. Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an approach to integrate values in technological design. In this paper we discuss how EIP and VSD may be combined into an integrated approach to digital innovation in education, which we call value-informed innovation. This approach not only considers educational effectiveness, but also incorporates the innovation’s impact on human values, its scalability and transferability to other contexts. We illustrate the integrated approach with an example case of an educational innovation involving digital peer feedback.
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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.
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Business innovation is a multidisciplinary area of expertise that bridges the gap between traditional areas of study such as business administration, organizational studies, marketing, design, engineering and entrepreneurship. Business innovation focuses on creating, accelerating and managing new and sustainable business models through innovation (Crossan and Apaydin, 2010; Keeley, Walters, Pikkel, and Quinn, 2013).
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Educational innovations often tend to fail, mainly because teachers and school principals do not feel involved or are not allowed to have a say. Angela de Jong's dissertation shows the importance of school principals and teachers leading 'collaborative innovation' together. Collaborative innovation requires a collaborative, distributed approach involving both horizontal and vertical working relationships in a school. Her research shows that teams with more distributed leadership have a more collaborative 'spirit' to improve education. Team members move beyond formal (leadership) roles, and work more collectively on school-wide educational improvement from intrinsic motivation. De Jong further shows that school principals seek a balance in steering and providing space. She distinguished three leadership patterns: Team Player, Key Player, Facilitator. Team players in particular are important for more collaborative innovation in a school. They balance between providing professional space to teachers (who look beyond their own classroom) and steering for strategy, frameworks, boundaries, and vision. This research took place in schools working with the program of Foundation leerKRACHT, a program implemented by more than a thousand schools (primary, secondary, and vocational education). The study recommends, towards school principals and teachers, and also towards trainers, policymakers, and school board members, to reflect more explicitly on their roles in collaborative innovation and talk about those roles.
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What will determine if power to gas will be an important technology in the energy transition over the next years? One can look at the development of a technology as a process that takes place in a technological innovation system (TIS). The TIS includes all actors and institutions that are involved in the development, diffusion and utilization of a technology. For a technology todevelop successfully the TIS should fulfil several functions. For power to gas technology several pilot projects are realized, studies are carried out and funds are available both for projects as for research. The functions called entrepreneurial activities, knowledge development, knowledge exchange and resource mobilization are all met. The function that faces the most problems iscalled market formation. There is not yet a regulatory framework for power to gas. Investors in power to gas also need to be rewarded for the benefits that they realize such as the avoided capital cost of extra infrastructure, the enabling of maximum utilization of renewable electricity and the increase in renewable content of the gas networks. Policy directed at market formation is therefor recommended.
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Introduction Innovation is crucial for companies who have to react to constantly changing markets. Several national and European research institutes stress the importance of developing innovation for small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). This was a trigger to design a minor on strategic innovation for different disciplines - technical and economic departments - of the Fontys University of Applied Sciences. It prepares students to be more competent to take initiatives in developing innovation. The newly designed education should be an answer to the question of how to help companies to become more able to adapt to new changes in the market by providing them with higher educated personnel, who have developed competences on strategic innovation. The starting point for the research is the perceived effectiveness of teaching students to take part in developing innovation at SMEs. More specifically, the question is how to develop action-oriented learning environments to develop competences for innovation development. Research The central research question of this thesis is: In what way could a competence-based and action-oriented learning environment on innovation development in SMEs be designed? This research question provides a basis for evaluating three implementations of the minor learning program (30 EC) on strategic innovation. Findings of the research indicate the importance of educating students about innovation. Educational strategies such as partnering learners with SME staff, simulation exercises, and hands-on exercises all contribute to students' analytical skills. 'Real world' experience in corporate settings helps students bridge the gap between theory and practice, and consequently prepares them to be competitive in their chosen employment. In the period from 2006 till 2009, three academic years were spend to teach students knowledge and competences on strategic innovation. The parameters evaluated are relevance and effectiveness and the system to be analysed is the minor 'strategic innovation'. These two parameters are described as follows: Relevance Teachers and students consider all teaching elements of the minor required to adequately prepare for contributions to innovation development in SMEs relevant. Key persons from SMEs believe that such knowledge and competences are important for companies to increase market competitiveness through innovation. Effectiveness Students develop perceptions on how innovation developments should be initiated in SMEs. They learn how to analyse companies for indicators of and preparation for changes. Students are capable of formulating an innovation development advice for companies, and explain how current activities could be changed to improve corporate success. These parameters are the focus of the measuring method. Optimization of the parameters improves the learning conditions. There is a relation between the two parameters and the variables of a conceptual model with which data can be categorised. Conclusions and recommendations The thesis concludes with a model to analyse the different positions and perspectives of the stakeholders. It is also used for designing a competence-based and action-oriented program. During the research, it became clear that teachers were having a major role in the learning processes of students to change them from rather inexperienced in strategic innovation, into being experienced to the level of starting professionals. Teachers must therefore have many different abilities/competences. For these teachers, it is important that they have - to a certain extent - an expertise in the field of study so they are able to coach and lecture their students properly. Therefore it is necessary that they have their networks with companies on this matter, which enables them to discuss the reality of innovation in the company. Next to the ability to understand the content, teachers must have the ability to determine the starting level of the students of different disciplines joining the minor and choose lecture and coaching conditions with which each student can learn effectively. Teachers therefore must be able to use several strategies of teaching. Students themselves also need to be experienced in interdisciplinary cooperation to work in strategic innovation projects. From these multidisciplinary approaches, teachers must be able to guarantee learning effectiveness to the major goal of the minor education. In order to do so, teachers need to collaborate themselves with their colleagues and agree to the formulated conditions of the minor education. The conclusions as presented from the data of the research are focussed on the teacher being the provider of knowledge and the "manager" of learning activities of students. The main success factors of these conclusions can be formulated as follows. 1. Teachers need to get the opportunity to become adapted to new fields of study in order to have a relevant contribution. 2. Teachers must use their network to find companies that fit to the goals of the minor. 3. Teachers need to determine the match of complexity of the minor and minimum conditions for students to join. 4. Teachers must understand how to help students to work interdisciplinary. 5. Teachers must adapt to new teaching and learning strategies to make the educational processes effective. 6. Teachers in a multidisciplinary teaching and learning context need to be informed on the background of students to make their teaching more effective. 7. Teachers must be able to present the specific theme of their lectures in the context of the goal of the minor to make their teaching activities effective. 8. Teachers from various disciplines working in a multidisciplinary minor need to work interdisciplinary with their colleagues. 9. Teachers must agree to the formulations of the competences. Universities of applied sciences mostly educate young professionals in the region they are situated in. They need to feel the responsibility to follow the needs of companies, like competences of starting professionals on innovation development, and give teachers the opportunities to make improvements of the education with which starting students are being prepared to become starting professionals in companies.
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