N E X T G E N E R AT I O N A N D
COP EN HAGEN IN N OVAT I O N
AN D EN TREP RENE URSHI P LA B
CON FEREN CE 20 13
CONTENTS
Introduction 5
Piloting the Entrepreneurial University //
The Copenhagen Case
Conference Publication 2013
Content and Editing //
Cathrine Oldenburg in cooperation with
Next Generation, CIEL and FFE project teams
About 5
The Incentives Have to Be There
Integration of Innovation & Entrepreneurship
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8
The Entrepreneurial Environment10
Cross-University Teaching12
Graphic Design //
Tenna Hansen
Photography //
Rasmus Degnbol
Copenhagen Cases14
The Pace of Change is Challenging Us
16
Next Steps Towards the Entrepreneurial University
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COPENHAGEN
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INTRODUCTION & ABOUT
COPENHAGEN
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INTRODUCTION & ABOUT
INTRODUCTION
On October 9th 2013 Next Generation and Copenhagen Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab hosted the conference Piloting the Entrepreneurial University: The Copenhagen Case.
The Copenhagen Case refers to four years of experience in integrating innovation and
entrepreneurship at and across University of Copenhagen, Technical University of Denmark and Copenhagen Business School. Throughout these four years a wide range of
projects have been initiated. We can divide these initiatives into three general themes :
Integration of Innovation and Entrepreneurship //
How can we make innovation and entrepreneurship an integrated part of university
curricula?
The Entrepreneurial Environment //
How do we create an innovative environment across universities?
Cross-University Collaboration //
How do we create sustainable collaboration with societal impact?
This publication sums up the key themes and discussions of the day. We hope that the
following pages will serve as a source for inspiration and future actions.
Learn more at www.copenhagencase.com
ABOUT
Next Generation and Copenhagen Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab build on an
alliance between the three major universities in Copenhagen, and they embody the
universities’ joint effort to develop and support initiatives within innovation and entrepreneurship. Next Generation was initiated in 2010 with a project period of 4 years. In
2011 CIEL was initiated as an extension of these activities with a two-year funding period. Both projects are financially supported by the European Social Fund and Capital
Denmark Growth Forum.
Learn more at www.nxtgen.dk and www.ciel-lab.dk
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T H E I N C E N T I V E S H AV E TO B E T H E R E
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T H E I N C E N T I V E S H AV E TO B E T H E R E
THE INCENTIVES HAVE
TO BETHERE
KAREN E. WILSON
A commitment from management, the right incentives for
faculty to teach in a different manner, and creating the right
kind of environment; there are many challenges in developing
the entrepreneurial university, but Scandinavia is the place to
be, according to Karen E. Wilson, advisor and board member
at the European Forum for Entrepreneurship Research and
keynote speaker at the Copenhagen Case conference.
Advisor and board member at
the European Forum for
Entrepreneurship Research and
keynote speaker at the
conference.
Interview with Karen E. Wilson
By Berit Ulriksen, FFE
For centuries, universities have had the
role of developing knowledge and training students. But now universities face
a new role to play. Entrepreneurship has
become increasingly important in order
to create jobs, to address social challenges, and to innovate the way we do
things. According to keynote speaker Karen E. Wilson the universities are the best
place to initiate this change, because at
the universities we can make sure students are exposed to entrepreneurship
and that they also get hands on-training.
But this requires a change from the traditional university to an entrepreneurial
university.
“If we want to change mindsets, we also
need to change the way universities operate and the way we teach. To do that is
hard, because we have centuries of tradition in which universities worked in a
certain way. So there has to be a commitment from the top of the universities”,
says Karen E. Wilson, and stresses one of
her main points: “If we want to develop
entrepreneurial universities, we have to
start with the leaders”.
The leader must be clear and explicit in
his or her dedication to turning the uni-
versity into an entrepreneurial university,
but the measures to do this must also
be structured in a way that encourages
staff, faculty and students to do things
differently. Furthermore, it is important
to create the right kind of environment
and establish a good collaboration with
businesses, government and other universities in the ecosystem. “The boundaries need to become more fluid allowing
more interaction. But the first steps are
the hardest”, says Wilson.
Students are the key
Many people would say that children
are entrepreneurial by nature. They are
curious, willing to test things and experiment, and according to Wilson, the
educational system needs to unleash this
entrepreneurial spirit instead of beating
it out of them. In her eyes students are
the key to creating the entrepreneurial
university. “When young people are in
school – or at university – they can afford
to make mistakes, they can experiment,
completely fail and start again – no problem. There has to be a willingness to experiment”, she says.
Students play a key role in driving bottom-up initiatives. They are creative, innovative, good at self-organizing and
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often very committed. One of Wilson’s
main points is also that we need to expose all students to the idea of entrepreneurship, so they at least see it. Then
we can develop specific programmes for
those who have the potential to take it
further.
come an example for universities around
the world. The main reasons for this, is
the strong political commitment combined with the education strategies to try
to integrate entrepreneurship at all levels
of education. This has been combined
with bold actions and the engagement of
key players.
Challenges ahead
Creating the entrepreneurial university does not come without challenges.
“Some of the challenges we have to be
aware of are: sustainability, quality, using
common definitions and having correct
goals. There has to be a long-term commitment, a clear strategy and a strong
connection with the ecosystem. A real
collaboration is about people, not about
institutions”, says Karen E. Wilson.
But the way forward is via collaboration,
both within the ecosystem, between universities, and across countries. To have
forums for professors where they can
come together, talk about what works
and what doesn’t, and learn from each
other. Sharing and learning across borders is critical to continued steps towards
the entrepreneurial university.
In Scandinavia we have come far, according to Wilson, and Scandinavia has be7
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INTEGRATION OF
INNOVATION &
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
may be showing the many dimensions
that can be adjusted into smaller tweaks
or more profound changes of their daily
teaching practices.
Creating an innovation culture
Culture eats strategy for breakfast, it is
said. If the institutional culture is not a
teammate, the entrepreneurial university’s concept will remain as fancy words
on a piece of paper. And even more critically, the concept will appear alienating, quickly loose momentum and casts
shadows of inertia for a long period.
How do you cultivate innovation and entrepreneurship in curriculum at the universities? Next Generation and CIEL have worked on
integrating innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) widely and in
various ways in existing courses and academic cultures.
This was one of the main points in the
conference session Building Momentum
and Capacity. Here, participants were
asked to make a game plan to build up an
I&E educational culture engaging the few
frontrunners to the majority of teachers.
For this purpose, the participants worked
with a new tool, I&E Momentum, that
focused on three severe obstructions as
the game plan was developed:
By Jesper Lee Jyderup, CIEL
Derived from the outcomes of Next Generation and CIEL, the conference’s two
sessions on integration of I&E focused
on implementation practises and the
awareness to institutional adoption. In
the present article we explain the reasoning behind the sessions.
it is difficult to extrapolate these ‘best
cases’ to other educational contexts considering how essentially different they
can be. Based on the experiences of Next
Generation and CIEL, we find that a onesize-fits-all approach will not work in
most cases.
I&E IN everyday life
We all know the enthusiastic frontrunners that diligently apply I&E in their
teaching activities. They lead the way,
and they are the ones who face all the
challenges associated with testing new
ideas. These people ensure that I&E
strategies are initiated and they deserve
great appreciation.
At the session Scoping the integration
Efforts we promoted a new learning tool,
I&E Implement, which has a different approach. The tool facilitates the concept
of ‘best practice’ through the changes
that the enthusiast’s I&E effort had on
three different dimensions of an academic course:
However, in the beginning these enthusiasts also represent a state of exception,
an extraordinary element in everyday
life. It is only when I&E strategies become part of the university culture and
works in the daily practice of the teaching activities that we can move on to the
next I&E strategy. Otherwise, the admirable work of the frontrunners will be lost
– and who then will take the lead?
Broadening the scope of I&E implementation
First of all, we have to learn from the
enthusiasts’ experiences. We must thoroughly and trustfully listen to their considerations and recommendations. Yet
1. Prioritization of initiatives. Focus your I&E investments on significant
projects. Too many initiatives with
potentially conflicting agendas can
confuse and end up cannibalizing
each other.
2. Order and motivation. Timing is crucial for relevance and thereby motivation. What the enthusiasts find
relevant and useful does not necessarily apply to the majority.
• Course management: What changes in resources and support
does I&E imply on the course?
• Course framework: What changes
does I&E have on the students’ deliverables and the teacher’s role?
• Course collaboration: What changes
does I&E have on internal and external collaborations?
That way, we capture some of the dynamics at stake when we embed I&E.
It also allows us to broaden the scope
of how integration of I&E in academic
teaching can be done. If we want to reach
a wider audience of teachers, one key
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COURSE RESPONSIBLES
DISCUSSED THEIR
IMPLEMENTATION PRACTICES
Associate Professor,
Claus Bøttcher Jørgensen,
UCPH.
Associate Professor,
Michael Bom Frøst,
UCPH.
Assistant Professor,
Stefania Baldursdottir, UCPH.
Associate Professor,
Frank Sejersen, UCPH.
Associate Professor,
Carsten Nico Portefée Hjortsø, UCPH.
3. Transitions. If you start scaling I&E
efforts without getting the institutional prerequisites in place, the development will stop abruptly.
Thinking of disseminating I&E in terms
of cultural adoption serves as a reminder
to play out a long-term I&E agenda that
makes I&E valuable for enthusiast as
well as the majority of teachers. Moreover, we believe that the likely success of
growing an I&E culture largely hinges on
an appreciation of the interdependence
between the three obstructions and the
ability to use them as a governing framework.
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You risk killing the spark
Indeed, connecting innovative and entrepreneurial researchers and teachers with
a wider institutional change programme
has become one of the most obvious
needs for piloting the entrepreneurial
university. But we need to make these
connections carefully. As a participant
wisely pointed out, you risk killing the
spark and damaging an existing I&E culture among the enthusiasts, if you move
forward and assign all attention to the
majority.
Two challenges ahead
We would argue that Next Generation
and CIEL have provided proof-of-idea to
the concept of the entrepreneurial university. Now it is time to bring the concept into the everyday life of our universities. It takes a strong team effort across
faculty members, students, management and administrative staff – as well as
a tremendous amount of stamina.
A good starting point is to recognize that
different phases of change processes requires different forms of motivation. Further, we must acknowledge that maintaining a commitment to I&E teaching
requires as much effort as building it. We
cannot afford killing the spark. When we
are piloting the entrepreneurial university, we will have to address both challenges.
ABOUT THE TOOLS
I&E Implement and I&E Momentum
are based on the experiences of CIEL
and Next Generation as well as theories about customer development
and project management. Thank you
to all the partners and sponsors involved in the development.
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THE ENTREPRENEURIAL ENVIRONMENT
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL
ENVIRONMENT
How can universities create and foster a collaborative, innovative
environment, and how do we measure the value of these kinds of
activities? This was the main discussion point of the conference
theme The Entrepreneurial Environment.
By Cathrine Amalie Oldenburg, CIEL
When discussing an innovative university
culture, the environment surrounding
universities indeed plays an important
role. The incubation facilities, innovation offices, student initiatives, and similar support organisations all play a vital
part in the university’s innovation and
entrepreneurship activities as part of
an ecosystem. In collaboration these
organisation can create visibility of the
field, critical mass and synergies larger
than the sum of the individual partners.
Specific to the Copenhagen Case is the
level of collaboration across campuses,
the extended collaboration with studentdriven initiatives and the experiences
with mixing extracurricular activities
with classroom activities.
Copenhagen collaboration
Unique to the Copenhagen Case the
university entrepreneurship environments are intertwined across campuses
and institutions. A key objective of Next
Generation and CIEL projects has been
to enhance collaboration between local
support organisations. As an example
the collaborative project The Student’s
Guide to Entrepreneurship provides a
map of the entrepreneurial support system in Copenhagen. Facing the fact that
business school startups often lack someone with technical skills on their founding team and vice versa, the CSE project
TEAMUP has developed a method for
matching student startups with students
from other disciplines across UCPH, DTU
and CBS. These forms of collaboration
have proven successful in terms of knowledge sharing and exchange, better use of
resources, and most importantly improving the value of what we offer students.
Student initiatives
Another collaboration aspect is student
involvement, i.e. how to involve student-driven networks in extra-curricular
activities. This entails acknowledging
students as a driving force for creating
long-lasting cultural change in university
environments, and the bottom-up activities initiated by student organisations
are a great way of creating a broader
reach and early awareness for students.
Increased collaboration and interaction
with student initiatives have been key in
both Next Generation and CIEL activities
and a range of student organisations are
thriving at the Copenhagen campuses
with initiatives such as DANSIC, Suitable
for Business, Gate to Create and Future
Entrepreneurs of Denmark. Being able
to collaborate with volunteer initiatives
requires a large degree of flexibility and
willingness to meet the students on their
terms, and the last four years have shown
a great development in how we collaborate with student initiatives from stop-go
financial support towards long-term collaboration, knowledge exchange and cocreation of events and projects.
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Integration with classroom activities
There is great potential in bringing practical elements from the outside world
into the classroom, and the entrepreneurial support system can play an important role in this. Venture Cup is a good
example of how extracurricular activities
and teaching can play together; in entrepreneurship courses where students
develop business plans, they are introduced to Venture Cup and by the end of
the semester encouraged to submit their
business plan to Venture Cup’s Startup
and Idea Competitions. In Next Generation Katapult has developed the extracurricular course Your Thesis as a Career
Starter, which allows students to explore
the commercial potential of their thesis. There is however a need to further
identify potentials and challenges in collaborating in an educational setting. This
entails balancing expectations and clarifying roles and learning outcomes.
Value creation
So what kind of value do these support organisations create? And how can we best
measure it? With activities ranging from
idea competitions and startup programs
to mentoring, networking and matchmaking, the outcome and value created
is diverse and often difficult to measure
by traditional means, especially when
the organisations are relatively young,
as is the case in Copenhagen, and traditional measuring points such as number
of spin-outs and patents obtained do not
(yet) apply. As a consequence support organisations are often forced to measure
on misleading parameters, e.g the number of students participating in a certain
activity rather than the quality of the activity.
PANEL DEBATE
Morten Ugelvig Andersen,
Venture Cup
However being able to evaluate and verify value creation is important for these
sorts of organisations, as they are dependant on internal and external funding
and therefore need to legitimize the relevance and value of their activities. Many
of these organisations therefore call for
and experiment with new measuring
points for evaluating the quality of their
activities.
Mikkel Sørensen,
DTU Sky Lab
Ida Vibroe Wærling,
Gate to Create
Peter Ottesen,
Katapult
Martin B. Justesen,
CSE Lab
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CROSS-UNIVERSITY TEACHING
CROSS-UNIVERSITY
TEACHING
The Copenhagen Case involves a large number of initiatives where
students and teachers are working across disciplines combining
different perspectives. Crossing the traditional academic boundaries is important when developing entrepreneurial attributes
among students and staff.
By Mikkel Trym, CIEL
The conference session on cross-university teaching addressed key learnings and challenges when students and
teachers collaborate across educational
disciplines – with industrial partners.
A number of collaborative approaches
were illustrated from the perspectives of
the involved students, teachers and industry partners.
PANEL DEBATE ON
EXPERIENCES WITH
CROSS-UNIVERSITY
TEACHING
Rikke Groth NIelsen,
Rhetoric Student, UCPH
Thomas J. Howard,
Associate Professor,
DTU Mechanics
Preben Nielsen,
Science Manager,
Novozymes
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Apply your knowledge
Based on her experiences from courses
and her activities in the student organisation Suitable for Business, UCPH student
Rikke Groth Nielsen divides the outcome
of cross-disciplinary courses into three
main benefits 1) Building personal competences and learning how to apply your
knowledge, 2) Improving the project,
product or solutions that your are working on, and 3) Improving employability of
graduates for the benefit of students and
society. To develop a successful crossdisciplinary course you need to focus
it around a common challenge, build a
common understanding and use a common method, says Rikke Groth Nielsen,
who is currently finishing her M.Sc. in
Rhetoric.
Learn through real-life cases and by
taking action
Good entrepreneurial teaching must be
realistic, prosperous and ambitious, says
Thomas J. Howard, associate professor
at DTU Mechanics and well known for
his strong approach for practicing experimental learning. Thomas is used to
teaching across disciplines and working
with real-life cases. In his courses students must demonstrate that they are
able to :
1. Work in a multidisciplinary environment
2. Remove product uncertainty
3. Test and build relevant prototypes
and hypotheses
4. Dispense of sequential planning
5. Pitch and communicate business
propositions
Students need to learn through real-life
cases and by taking action, as it enhances
ownership, the learning outcome and the
empowerment of the students, he says.
Future workforce requirements
University-business collaboration, where
students are the principal ingredient is
very rewarding for all partners, says Preben Nielsen, Science Manager at Novozymes. Novozymes has collaborated in
the bio-innovation educational programs
for several years and are focused on recruiting candidates, who are able to think
outside the box, and who possess the will
and drive to realise an idea in practice.
He points out the importance in hiring
employees who are excellent in collabo13
rating in order to take advantages of
complementary skills. Also, candidates
must be trained in putting their knowledge into perspective, as new ideas are
developed in the cross field of new opportunities in the technology platform
and changes in the demand, market or
among customers. Cross-disciplinarity is
necessary to produce unique solutions
with substantial societal impacts, and we
need to develop these workforce attributes, he says.
Benefits for all partners
During the session it became obvious
that there are some very clear benefits
to cross-disciplinary teaching. Not only
do the students boost their learning and
awareness of own competences, also
teachers working with other faculties
and companies are gaining from the experience. Teaching across the traditional
boundaries become a pathway for personal and professional development, a
way to build network and secure future
funding opportunities. Working on finding solutions for the grand societal challenges, collaborating across disciplines
and with industry, is the cornerstone of
the majority of future national and international funding in both teaching and
research, e.g. KIC, knowledge networks,
H2020, Inno+.
The session participants also stressed
that a lot of current barriers need to be
removed in order to develop more crossdisciplinary teaching; lack of incentives
and rewards on the one hand and the removal of structural barriers such as transfer of merits, rigid study plans, and different semester structures on the other
hand.
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COPENHAGEN CASES
COPENHAGEN
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Next Generation and CIEL
have initiated a broad range
of projects and products that
cover the three themes of the
conference: integration of innovation and entrepreneurship, creating an innovative
environment and enhancing
cross-institutional collaboration. Here you will find a sample of projects that illustrate
the Copenhagen Case.
I&E TOOLBOX
As a teacher you face a lot of challenges
integrating I&E in your teaching. To help
teachers overcome these challenges,
the innovation units at Copenhagen University, Katalyst and Katapult, have developed a toolbox based on all the I&E
courses and workshops developed during
their 4 years of participating in Next Generation. The toolbox helps teachers both
plan and implement I&E activities ranging from smaller I&E exercises, to I&E
workshops and full length I&E courses.
To support the teacher in developing and
implementing I&E activities the toolbox
offers several didactic course models to
create structure, flow and progression in
the course, more than 30 methods (and
more to come) for analysis, ideation,
concept development, pitch and realization. Furthermore the toolbox includes
templates for course planning, course
description, workbooks and guides on
how to build a case, how to work with it
in groups and much more. Visit the toolbox at innovation.blogs.ku.dk. The toolbox will be available in English from the
1st of January 2014.
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL TEACHING
PROGRAMME
The teaching Corps is a group of dedicated university lecturers who brought
their compulsory courses into a programme and explored different paths
to embed entrepreneurial elements into
the domain-specific subject/course. The
programme has been developed and
managed by Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship at CBS as a part of the
Next Generation collaboration. Fundamental to this specific programme was
broadening the understanding of entrepreneurship as a method rather than
purely a discipline. The program has now
been running for three years, involving six teachers the first year, nine the
second year, and eighteen at the end of
2013. The first two years approximately
800 students were exposed to different
teaching initiatives where innovation
and entrepreneurship had been embedded. This number is expected to increase
to more than 1600 students at the end of
2013 and hopefully this has become an
essential step towards diffusing and anchoring entrepreneurship in the heart of
higher education.
DANSIC AND SOCIAL INNOVATION
Student organisation DANSIC (Danish
Social Innovation Club) aims to inspire
to Social Innovation locally and globally.
DANSIC is an ambitious, student-driven
organisation consisting of 40 hardworking volunteers who each year spend
more than 14.500 hours to broaden the
knowledge and take action on social innovation among students. All DANSIC
volunteers are students with various
educational backgrounds from all over
Denmark. DANSIC seeks to inspire to social innovation through a Pitch Competition, small seminars throughout the year,
the main conference in spring with 400
participants, and the online platform. In
“DANSIC we believe that the key to solving the challenges that society faces is
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by working together across sectors and
disciplines. At our annual conference in
March, we facilitate the meeting between
disciplines and sectors, and between the
future labour market and today’s labour
market. In sum, DANSIC engages people
independent of institutions and creates
a bottom-up movement with the aim of
making a positive difference in society”,
says Signe Hansen, President at DANSIC.
PROOF OF CONCEPT IN KATAPULT
Proof of Concept is an initiative created
by Katapult in order to support students
in their attempt to turn business ideas
into startups. “We provide funding of up
to of 35.000 DKK to promising student
entrepreneurs. The premise for success
is firm establishment and job generation i.e. has the startup been successful
enough to generate new jobs within the
firm”, says Peter Ottesen, Director of
Katapult.
The funding process starts with an application round where students submit
their business ideas. A proof of concept
committee evaluates the applications
based on three criteria: level of innovation, societal impact, and value for
money. Between 10 and 20 students are
granted the funds. So far seven rounds
of funding have been completed. Within
the first year since the students received
the funding, 60% have managed to establish a firm. This number might actually be higher since not all of the students
have been accounted for yet. 54% of the
firms have a positive turnover. 20% have
been able to grow substantially enough
to generate new jobs within the startup.
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BEIJING-COPENHAGEN URBAN
CHALLENGE
Beijing Copenhagen Urban Challenge is a
CIEL project aiming to enhance entrepreneurship and innovation through global
student collaboration. With the purpose
of solving real-life problems related to
green urban development, students
from CBS, DTU, and Peking University
are put together for four weeks in a master’s level elective course. A pilot project
with two teams of four students was
initiated and completed in 2013. Each
team consisted of a student from CBS
and DTU and two students from Peking
COPENHAGEN CASES
University. Throughout the program, the
students were based in Copenhagen as
well as Beijing. This double-exchange
allowed the students to see first-hand
some of the challenges and opportunities of Danish-Chinese collaboration, as
well as making it possible to meet local
company representatives and identifying urban challenges in both cities. “The
most important learning aspect in this
program has been to go out in real life
and see how Beijing and Copenhagen are
planning climate adaptation”, says Jonas
Wied Pedersen, student at DTU.
Learn more at
www.greeninnovationincities.dk
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T H E PA C E O F C H A N G E I S C A L L E N G I N G U S
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T H E PA C E O F C H A N G E I S C A L L E N G I N G U S
THE PACE OF CHANGE IS
CHALLENGING US
PAUL D. HANNON
Professor and director of
The world as we know it is changing, but through globalization
and new technology it is changing at a faster pace than ever
before. This gives us an environment with a high degree of
uncertainty, high complexity, and high unpredictability.
According to keynote speaker Paul D. Hannon, professor and
director of LEAD Wales at Swansea University, the only way we
can respond to this is to become more entrepreneurial.
LEAD Wales at
Swansea University
Interview with Paul D. Hannon
By Berit Ulriksen
If the world around us requires us to be
more entrepreneurial, the education system is a fundamental contributor to that,
especially at the universities. And here
the challenge is twofold: “Can a university as an organisation be an entrepreneurial organisationand respond to the
pressure? And as an educational institution, can it create an environment in
which students and staff can learn and be
encouraged to and rewarded for developing an entrepreneurial way of thinking?” asks Paul D. Hannon.
Failure is okay
These, however, are not the only challenges universities face. To become
more entrepreneurial requires a change
of mindset at the core construction of
universities. Entrepreneurs learn by doing, by taking risks, and they learn from
failure and mistakes. And it is a major
challenge for universities to change their
mindset in order to operate like that - or
indeed to allow their students to operate
like that. “In the education system as it is,
the one thing a student must never do is
fail, and that is the antithesis of entrepreneurship”, says Hannon.
On the way
According to Hannon, the understanding
of the concept of the entrepreneurial university can be compared to a jigsaw puzzle. “We don’t have all the pieces yet, but
the image has become clearer and clearer over the past 5-10 years. There are still
many unknowns, and we don’t know exactly where we will end up, but the journey has begun. What is encouraging and
inspiring is things like CIEL and Next Generation, where you have universities who
recognize that they need to do things
differently, so they are cooperating, they
are experimenting, they are taking risks,
and they are innovating. They are changing the way they do things, and through
that process trying to understand what
works and doesn’t work”, says Paul D.
Hannon.
One of the things that CIEL, Next Generation and other university programmes
often embark upon is pilot projects. But
it often proves difficult to bring those pilot projects to the next level – to embed
them in the university’s curriculum or to
transform the knowledge gained into a
new way of doing things across the university or in the ecosystem.
“We have too many pilot projects and
that is one of the problems. They tend to
be short-termed and they tend to have
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funding for that period and not beyond.
And when people leave, there is so much
tacit knowledge in their heads, which
they take with them. So maybe rather
than thinking of it as a pilot, think of it
as the first phase of an ongoing development”, says Hannon.
Trust and confidence
Ensuring the development of the entrepreneurial university requires a dedication from management. But according
to Hannon the students are at the core.
“Why do we exist if it is not for our stu-
dents?” he asks: “The students should be
given support but also space to innovate
and be entrepreneurial. In the process
they need role models, and they need for
the faculty, staff and leaders to have confidence and trust in them”. All of these
things need to be present to develop the
entrepreneurial graduates of tomorrow.
But there is still one barrier, which Paul
D. Hannon sees as the most hindering. “If
I could only remove one thing it would be
the fear of failure”, he says.
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COPENHAGEN
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2013
NEXT STEPS TOWARDS THE ENTREPRENEURIAL UNIVERSITY
NEXT STEPS TOWARDS THE
ENTREPRENEURIAL
UNIVERSITY
The Copenhagen Case illustrates numerous ways of how to foster
entrepreneurial mind- and skillset among students and staff. It is
a practical showcase of how different measures can support the
development of entrepreneurial attributes in an effectual,
collaborative and sustainable manner.
By Mikkel Trym, CIEL
The outcome is manifested through a
number of new educational programs,
courses, teach-the-trainer programs,
teaching tools, incubations services and
student-driven activities. It provides evidence that the entrepreneurial university, at pilot level, is possible.
The next step
Although the activities involved in the
Copenhagen Case activities have been
substantial, they still only account for a
small share of the institutions as a whole.
UCPH, DTU and CBS are large universities that in sum accounts for more than
half of the Danish University sector. The
natural next step will be to scale-up activities and to integrate innovation and entrepreneurship activities into and across
the core organisation.
So far, the development has been based
on champions, on external funding and
on a temporary infrastructure. Now, the
key question is how do we up-scale and
maintain the strong momentum accomplished, while activities to a much larger
extent will be based on the core organisational structures, such as the line-management structure, university funding,
incentives and measures.
Guiding framework
To get a better understanding of how
prepared our institutions are for meeting
the requirements of the entrepreneurial
university, we have used the new EU/
OECD Guiding Framework for Entrepreneurial Universities. It is a self-evaluation
tool to assess a number of different areas
of the institution in light of the broader
entrepreneurial agenda. During the conference more than 20 university teachers
shared their results of their assessment.
In extension to the conference, a leaders seminar with top university management was organized to include their
standpoints on the guiding framework as
well.
The assessment is dived into eight areas.
While the universities seem to be performing quite well with regards to areas
such as university-business collaboration, pathways for entrepreneurs and
internationalization, there are clear challenges regarding the areas of entrepreneurial leadership, organisational capacity, entrepreneurial teaching and to what
extent the impact of the developments
are systematically measured. These are
some of the essential questions to answer in order to take the next step in
developing a university that meets the
needs of the future.
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Entrepreneurial Leadership and
Governance
The three universities are all in the process of developing governance structures in order to strengthen the area and
improve decision-making. A new entrepreneurship BIS platform is implemented at CBS, a senior vice president for innovation and entrepreneurship has been
appointed at DTU, and UCPH has created
a taskforce that will come up will suggestions for a governance structure that can
coordinate and enhance the field.
According to the Guiding Framework,
some of the key questions to ask leadership are whether the university has
a shared entrepreneurial vision for the
future of the institution and how it is
implemented in practice by the entire
management line. Strong leadership
and good governance is crucial, and so
is faculty’s autonomy to overcoming bureaucratic barriers in order to undertake
entrepreneurial activities and speed up
idea creation and decision-making. What
structures are in place to secure co-ordination of activities within the institution
and within the local entrepreneurship
ecosystem?
Organisational Capacity and
Incentives
The universities are structured vertically
into different academic research disciplines, which to some extent are further
separated between research and teaching activities, administration, technology
transfer and so forth. Horizontally the
university is divided between the different management layers; the rectors’ office, faculty management, department
management and research groups.
In the entrepreneurial organisation all
parts of the university (staff and students) work together, creating synergies
and linkages across faculties, departments and other structures, breaking
down traditional boundaries and silos. A
key question to ask is what mechanisms
are in place for exploiting internal knowledge and resources through, for example, shared facilities across faculties,
student-staff structures, interdisciplinary
NEXT STEPS TOWARDS THE ENTREPRENEURIAL UNIVERSITY
structures, cross faculty teaching and research groups? And are there clear incentive, reward systems and recognition for
staff members actively supporting entrepreneurial activities? Does the university
have a sustainable/long-term financial
strategy to support the entrepreneurial
development?
Entrepreneurship teaching and
learning
In the Copenhagen Case we are working directly with about 200 research and
teaching staff members. Although it is a
substantial number it still only accounts
for a small proportion of staff. The Entrepreneurial University expands and integrates the entrepreneurial education offer to the institution as a whole, including
all staff and students. Does the university
have structures that facilitate entrepreneurial development across all activities?
Does staff take an entrepreneurial approach to teaching in all departments,
promoting diversity and innovation in
teaching and learning? Does the university commit to regular review, validation
and updating of entrepreneurial course
content and learning outcomes? And
does the teachers integrate the results of
current entrepreneurship research into
their teaching?
Measuring the impact
Underlying the drive to create a more
entrepreneurial university is the need
to understand the impact to graduate
entrepreneurship, retaining talent, local economic development, etc. Impact
measurement in universities, in particular with regard to education, is underdeveloped. Some important first steps
have been made during the Copenhagen
Case, such as developing and piloting an
evaluation tool for measuring teaching
impact on students mind-set change.
Further it is important to question to
what extend the university evaluates the
level of engagement with entrepreneurial teaching and learning across all faculties and departments and compare and
contrast the findings and ensure that the
results are fed back into course renewal
and staff development plans.
19
Look towards the future
At policy level and among learning experts there is no doubt that the entrepreneurial attributes are essential requirements for all knowledge-workers
in the future. No matter whether you
are a public or private employee, or you
are running your own start-up, all university candidates are met by an increasing
necessity to create value, based on academic knowledge, in an even more rapidly changing, complex and competitive
world. If universities, governments and
employers are serious about developing
these attributes, there are a number of
organisational developments that need
to be undertaken. The Copenhagen Case
demonstrates that it is doable in practice, at an ambitious project level. The
next step will be to prove that it is the
same case for the university institutions,
as a whole.
W W W. C OP E N H AG E NC A S E . C OM