This is the introduction to the special issue of World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development (WREMSD) dedicated to workplace innovation and social innovation related to work and organisation. As technological and business model innovations alone are not sufficient to enhance opportunities for businesses and employment, awareness is rising that better use should be made of human talents and new ways of organising and managing. In order to make working environments more receptive for innovation, and to enable people in organisations to take up an entrepreneurial role as intrapreneurs, a shift towards workplace innovation can be observed. Workplace innovation is complementary to technological and business model innovation, and a necessary ingredient for successful renewal, in that it addresses a type of management that seeks collaboration with employees through dialogue and employee engagement.
Introduction: There are good reasons to study urban innovation from a systemic perspective. A key finding in innovation research is that organizations rarely innovate in isolation, but in interaction with clients, competitors, suppliers, and other organizations. A system perspective is useful in understanding and analyzing these interactions. Cities and urban regions are increasingly recognized as key milieus in which these interactions occur. The urban innovation system approach conceptualizes the city or urban region as a context in which innovations emerge from complex interactions between urban actors—firms, citizens, governments, knowledge institutes— in a particular institutional setting. The systemic view of innovation departs from traditional linear models that depict innovation as a staged process that starts with (basic) scientific research and ends with commercialization by companies. Innovation processes are much more complex and diverse, influenced by multiple actors that interact in networks with feedback loops, and involving many types of knowledge beyond scientific knowledge. Urban innovation systems are nested in innovation systems on other spatial levels—regional, national, international. Studies on urban innovation systems seek to explain how innovations emerge in an urban context, why urban regions differ in their innovative performance, and also address questions on the governance and management of such systems. Studies in this field draw from a variety of disciplines including economic geography, urban and regional economics, political sciences, innovation studies, social sciences, and urban planning.
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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.
The European creative visual industry is undergoing rapid technological development, demanding solid initiatives to maintain a competitive position in the marketplace. AVENUE, a pan-European network of Centres of Vocational Excellence, addresses this need through a collaboration of five independent significant ecosystems, each with a smart specialisation. AVENUE will conduct qualified industry-relevant research to assess, analyse, and conclude on the immediate need for professional training and educational development. The primary objective of AVENUE is to present opportunities for immediate professional and vocational training, while innovating teaching and learning methods in formal education, to empower students and professionals in content creation, entrepreneurship, and innovation, while supporting sustainability and healthy working environments. AVENUE will result in a systematised upgrade of workforce to address the demand for new skills arising from rapid technological development. Additionally, it will transform the formal education within the five participating VETs, making them able to transition from traditional artistic education to delivering skills, mindsets and technological competencies demanded by a commercial market. AVENUE facilitates mobility, networking and introduces a wide range of training formats that enable effective training within and across the five ecosystems. A significant portion of the online training is Open Access, allowing professionals from across Europe to upgrade their skills in various processes and disciplines. The result of AVENUE will be a deep-rooted partnership between five strong ecosystems, collaborating to elevate the European industry. More than 2000 professionals, employees, students, and young talents will benefit from relevant and immediate upgrading of competencies and skills, ensuring that the five European ecosystems remain at the forefront of innovation and competitiveness in the creative visual industry.
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?
The BECEE initiative represents a transformative collaboration between four leading European HEIs—Hanze University of Applied Sciences (HUAS), Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), South East Technological University (SETU), and Universiteti "Aleksandër Moisiu" Durrës (UAMD). Our consortium embodies the essence of BECEE and the EIT Knowledge Triangle Model because it also comprises of 4 industry partners (KPN, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Innofuse, Zurich, Switzerland, Dungarvan Enterprise Centre, South East, Ireland, and Linda Laboratory, Durrës, Albania) bringing together partners from education, research, and business who are equally committed to collaborate on innovation action plans to fostering balanced collaborative entrepreneurship ecosystems in our respective regions. This consortium, therefore, is strategically designed to pool diverse strengths, creating a synergetic force for innovation and entrepreneurship that transcends the capabilities of any single organisation.
