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 6 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 18 COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 INTRODUCTION & ABOUT COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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 4 5 COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 T H E I N C E N T I V E S H AV E TO B E T H E R E COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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 6 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 COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 I N T E G R AT I O N O F I N N O VAT I O N & E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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 8 I N T E G R AT I O N O F I N N O VAT I O N & E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P 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. 9 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. COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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. 10 COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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 11 COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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 12 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. COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 COPENHAGEN CASES COPENHAGEN CASES 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 14 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. COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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 15 COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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 COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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 16 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. 17 COPENHAGEN CASE 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. 18 COPENHAGEN CASE 2013 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
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