These are hard days for companies: they have to survive in a market that has been hit by a financial crisis. Many countries in Europe have severe problems trying to overcome this financial crisis. The main remedy applied by governments is to cut back on expenditure, but on the other hand it is said that it is important for a country, and especially for companies, to invest in innovation. These innovations should lead to innovative products that will lead to profitability turnovers for these companies and, as a consequence, improve the economic conditions in a country. Universities provide students with engineering competences, like develop innovation, with which they can show a higher degree of ability to answer complex questions such as how to become players in the market again. Teaching students to become more innovative engineers, Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Department of Engineering, has designed a curriculum in which students are educated in the competence innovation. An important element in the process of teaching innovation to students is the approach of inquiring into possibilities of patents. In the second semester of the first year, students can decide to join an innovative project called: ‘The invention project’. The basis of this project is that students are given the opportunity to create their own invention and with their previously acquired knowledge and skills they design, calculate, prototype and present their invention. In a research project, the experiences of students in this Invention Project have been analysed. The goal of this study was to understand what the success factors are for such a project. The basis of this inquiry is a questionnaire to identify the opinions of students. The research was carried out in the spring semester of 2012. In total 31 students were involved in this research. The results show that there was a high degree of student satisfaction about the Invention Project focused on innovation development. Success factors for this project in the first year of the curriculum were seen: 1 to work on own inventions, 2 development of student’s perception of the total product creation process and 3 to make students see the relevance of contacts with real professionals from industry and from the patent office in their own project. Improvements can be made by: 1 helping students more during the creativity stage in the project and 2 to coach them more on the aspect of engineering a successful invention of which they can be proud. This Invention project is a interesting with which collaborations with other universities can be set up.
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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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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.
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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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The world is rapidly transforming. Economic, ecological and technological developments transcend existing boundaries and challenge the way we innovate. The challenge we face is to reinvent innovation as well, changing the way organisations and industries innovate and cooperate. Only with a new approach we can design a better future: an approach where stakeholders from government, organisations, companies and users participate in new ways of collaboration; an approach where solutions are realised that makes our society future-proof. Participatory innovation means that the innovation team changes: expanding beyond the boundaries of the own organisation. For organisations and companies, this is a huge step. Every partner must be willing to think and act beyond their own borders and participate in a joint effort. Participative innovation is a new way of working, where new challenges are encountered. In the field of urban lighting, this transformation is strongly felt. This paper will further explore the challenge and describe a rich case study where participative innovation is used to rethink, redesign and realise the solutions to transform urban lighting from functional lighting to improving social quality.
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How can the grower and the supplier in the greenhouse horticulture industry gain competitive advantage through radical innovation? The challenge lies in time- to-market, in customer relationship, in developing new product/market combinations and in innovative entrepreneurship. Realizing this ambition requires strengthening the knowledge base, stimulating innovation, entrepreneurship and education. It also requires professionalizing people. In this paper an innovation and entrepreneurial educational and research programme is introduced. This KITE120-programme aims at strengthening multidisciplinary collaboration between enterprise, education and research. It helps making the step from ambition to action, and from incremental to radical innovation. We call this an 'Amazing Jump'.
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Introduction (author supplied) : In this paper we propose future mapping, an alternative approach to futures research. With future mapping we intend to overcome some of the main problems that we encountered when applying scenario thinking in the area of product design and innovation. Future mapping attempts to develop multi-layered maps of possible futures, which can be used by pro-active companies and innovation teams as an instrument to ‘navigate’ the future (Munnecke & Van der Lugt, 2006). The approach invites designers to apply their analytical, creative and emphatical skills in a dialogue about future opportunities that lay ahead. In the past few years we have taught and applied the future mapping approach with various groups of Master’s level engineering students, both in The Netherlands and Denmark. We have altered and adjusted the approach as we learned from these experiences. In this paper we will describe the current state of the approach. The paper is not meant to provide a deep theoretical overview or a thorough empirical study. Rather it is meant to provide a hands-on process description to inform about the method and to enable anyone to apply future mapping. After describing why we think future mapping is a promising direction for futures research, we will provide a concise overview of the process steps involved. Then we will describe one student project as a case example. We will discuss the various types of future maps produced by the students. We will conclude by making some general observations about using future mapping as a method for futures research, and by proposing some directions for future work.
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These are hard days for companies: they have to survive in a market that has been hit by a financial crisis. Many countries in Europe have severe problems trying to overcome this financial crisis. The main remedy applied by governments is to cut back on expenditure, but on the other hand it is said that it is important for a country, and especially for companies, to invest in innovation. These innovations should lead to innovative products that will lead to profitability turnovers for these companies and, as a consequence, improve the economic conditions in a country. Universities provide students with engineering competences, like develop innovation, with which they can show a higher degree of ability to answer complex questions such as how to become players in the market again. Teaching students to become more innovative engineers, Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Department of Engineering, has designed a curriculum in which students are educated in the competence innovation. An important element in the process of teaching innovation to students is the approach of inquiring into possibilities of patents. In the second semester of the first year, students can decide to join an innovative project called: ‘The invention project’. The basis of this project is that students are given the opportunity to create their own invention and with their previously acquired knowledge and skills they design, calculate, prototype and present their invention. In a research project, the experiences of students in this Invention Project have been analysed. The goal of this study was to understand what the success factors are for such a project. The basis of this inquiry is a questionnaire to identify the opinions of students. The research was carried out in the spring semester of 2012. In total 31 students were involved in this research. The results show that there was a high degree of student satisfaction about the Invention Project focused on innovation development. Success factors for this project in the first year of the curriculum were seen: 1 to work on own inventions, 2 development of student’s perception of the total product creation process and 3 to make students see the relevance of contacts with real professionals from industry and from the patent office in their own project. Improvements can be made by: 1 helping students more during the creativity stage in the project and 2 to coach them more on the aspect of engineering a successful invention of which they can be proud. This Invention project is an interesting with which collaborations with other universities can be set up.
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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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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.
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