The international conference “Innovation – Creating the Future” attracts more than 200 delegates from over 15 countries, brings businesses and universities together and provokes them to brainstorm on how to work together for a better future for both parties and how innovation could be an integral part for a better collaboration.
Conference “Innovation – Creating the Future” is supported by European Union Erasmus+ Action Project APInno, which aims for fostering the collaboration between business and universitiesas one key issue to be targeted by developing an innovative approach and methodology for teaching one of the under-exploited concepts – Innovation Management (IM).
Innovation plays a focal role in the university and business collaboration BUT this role needs to be structured the same way innovation is a systematic process. Therefore, after trials and erros for 2 years the APInno project established an innovation management methodologywhich is based on expriential learning in order to bridge the large gap between what workforce universities ‘produce’ and what companies actually need. The methodology shows us that from the messy idea generation moment through concept development and pipeline management, execution and implementation have to follow.
The public is already beginning to question the value higher education provides to society. It is obvious that things need to change as we can all observe how students have troubles finding appropriate jobs after graduating and trying to settle their debts which they took to be able to study at a university. Therefore, instead of making money and contributing to the economy, students waste time and incur expenses. Yes, the university model needs to be fundamentally alteredso they could feed businesses with the energy and enthusiasm of skillful employees ready to ‘fight’ in a competitive world where innovation is not only a buzz word but reality.
We see new mindsets, new generations, new organisations appearing on the horizon. We also see new markets emerging. The world has moved from having thousands of businesses each with millions of customers to millions of businesses with hundreds of thousands of customers. This is a result from shifting to technology-supported industries. However,innovation is not about technology at all, it is about how we efficiently and effectively use what we have in order to produce value for ourselves and others.
Perhaps most people have already observed that creativity and innovation have become buzzwords for business success, followed by terms such as ‘Design Thinking’ creeping into business education. However, some research shows us that there is around 20% decline in creative capacity of learners in the past 20 years. In an era when creativity is in demand, we need to first understand the creative thinking processand the difference between implementation (doing things that are determined by others and matching against their expectations) and innovation (producing multiple and varied solutions that respond to change and often surprise).
The entrepreneurial journey is simple: starts from an idea, right through a business model to the business plan. However, entrepreneurs need to take into consideration the market desirability, financial viability and technical feasibility of the business they are trying to establish. Therefore, designing a business model is the essence of a business opportunity, whether it is to be pursued in a start-up, corporate venturing or social entrepreneurial setting.
Universities are a great source for technological opportunities for creating high-technology ventures. Despite that, universities are generally characterized as having weak capabilities for the development of commercial applications. The academic culture values getting its hands on research, but the commercial and entrepreneurial aspect comes right outside it and this is a sensitive issue. Academia has to develop not only creative and confident minds but commercially oriented graduates prepared for the business challenges they will come across.
The APInno project has proven once again the importance of business and academia partnership. But the collaboration focuses on the topic of innovation and this has brought new amazing ideas for future work on assisting the two parties. The project sets out important points to look at, for example,how such collaboration can accelerate the university-work transition for students through internshipsand how setting real innovation challenges to be solved by students could be a real asset for businesses. Indeed, it’s a win-win for everyone.
Driven by our experience in business development, management consulting, innovation management and entrepreneurship as well as many years of profound research and participation in hundreds of projects and initiatives we created the Knowledge, Innovation and Strategies Management Club to not only assist bridging the gap between academia, research and business but also to unite a community willing to play an integral role in delivering change to a more sustainable innovation ecosystem in Bulgaria and South East Europe. More…
