Education for innovation trends collaborations and views

J Intell Manuf (2013) 24:487–493 DOI 10.1007/s10845-012-0631-z

Education for innovation: trends, collaborations and views Augusta Maria Paci · Cecilia Lalle · Maria Stella Chiacchio

Received: 30 May 2010 / Accepted: 12 February 2012 / Published online: 28 February 2012 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Abstract Education and training represent an important framework condition to promote future competences and high qualified skills of engineers and high-skilled workers in general. In the last 5 years, innovation is considered the overarching policy driving all other European policies such as higher education with the purpose of building an Innovation Union. In this perspective, today there is the urgency to inter-relate higher education competence development and innovative industries to leverage future jobs creation and maximise the benefits of internationalisation into a consolidated scheme across the European Union. This paper presents an overview in this complex area for a holistic approach to innovation and is a consequential result of a support action project with stakeholders that have promoted a paradigm change based on research and innovation. The overview reports on trends, initiatives of academia-industry collaborations, views of European stakeholders on priority themes in the process of change.

Keywords Innovation · Higher education · Manufacturing · Holistic

Introduction Although the turbulent economic crisis requires all governments’ efforts on financial and market issues, higher education represents an area of intervention for preparing human resources to compete in the globalization era. In the middle A. M. Paci (B) · C. Lalle · M. S. Chiacchio Molecular Design Department, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Viale dell’Università, 11, 00185 Rome, Italy e-mail: augustamaria.paci@cnr.it C. Lalle e-mail: cecilia.lalle@cnr.it

of this socio-economic change, the high-level educational institutions—together with pro-active industries and policy makers—play a role in the strategic actions for innovation.

Skills, higher education and training form the condition to strengthen human capital for a durable research and innovation cycle to produce a strong impact on economic recovery and growth of Europe. In the competitive development of enabling and industrial technologies—that will change industrial patterns in products-services, processes and organizations—investments in higher education and high qualified skills will have a significant impact on markets’ and society’s developments.

In the European Union, innovation is considered the overarching policy objective driving all other European policies in the development of competitive framework conditions— such as higher education, skills, regional development, standards and tax policy—in the perspective of building an Innovation Union (Andersdotter 2011).

Within this overall objective, in strategic areas—such as engineering for manufacturing sectors—higher education can pursue the purpose of dual education developed throughout academia-industry collaborations and on mutual early examination of the needs of the labour market, the lack of which might weaken the achievement of the innovation policy.

In the last 5 years, the topic of education for innovation has been discussed by stakeholders such as authorities, research community, business and citizens at EU, Member States, regional and local levels. A wide collective reflection was carried out with specific recommendations to make the topic a priority in the European political agenda. This paper presents an overview in this complex area to develop a holistic approach to innovation. This overview is a consequential result of a support action project with stakeholders that have promoted a paradigm change based on research

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and innovation. With regard to the above, the paper describes three aspects: • trends for innovation highlighting higher education and training as an important pillar for change, • academia-industry collaborations presenting determinants and five initiatives for high skilled jobs, • European stakeholders’ views regarding the manufacturing sector focusing the priority themes in the process of change.

Trends for innovation The trends for innovation are brought forward by the European Commission that promotes the EU2020 strategy and actions to respond to major global challenges, industrial development and social sustainability in the knowledge economy. Education and training play a crucial role in this strategy (European Commission 2010).

The first flagship initiative “Innovation Union”, launched in 2010, states that knowledge is a key innovation emergency area (SEC 2010). In the same perspective, the flagship initiative “Youth on the move” aims at enhancing the performance of education systems and at facilitating the entry of young people to the labour markets.

In 2011 the high-level political European initiative on Key Enabling Technologies (KET) was set up by the European Commission-DG Enterprise and Industry involving experts from Europe in a High Experts’ Group (HLG on KETs 2010).

The HLG built up a policy analysis for industrial technologies development in strategic areas. It also recognized essential, for industrial innovation, to promote at EU level future regulatory framework conditions such as Skills, higher education and training, Regulatory framework conditions, Promising pilot and demonstration projects, Financing instruments, Co-operation outside Europe.

In the same direction for the objective of the EU2020 strategy, the European Innovation and Technology Institute (EIT) develops its initiative for reinforcing the innovation capacity of the EU in knowledge creation and transfer forming partnerships for learning, development and application.

EIT aims to create and integrate structures, known as Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), which link the higher education, research and business sectors to one another to boost—through this synergy—innovation and entrepreneurship. EIT has made public its Strategic Innovation Agenda (SIA) “Investing in Innovation beyond 2014” (EIT 2011). The scope is promoting a behavioural change to meet emerging education needs for world leading innovation and skill sets that are not covered by existing educational provision. In support of the EIT SIA, a consultation report

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contains proposals of potential priority areas for future waves of KICs (Haegeman and Cagnin 2011).

Also in the discussion for the development of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA 2010) which regards the harmonization of the educational process in the Member States, is becoming strategic the issue of educational paths for developing high qualified skills not only for the academic community but also for the productive system (ET2020 2009).

In the USA, President Obama in mid 2011 launched the initiative Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) with a number of key steps for innovation involving private sector industry, universities, and the government (AMP 2011).

Among the additional complementary steps for the manufacturing sector, President Obama’s initiative includes the “Multi-university collaborative framework for sharing of educational materials and best practices relating to advanced manufacturing and its linkage to innovation”. Participating universities will define research opportunities and build a collaborative roadmap for identify key technology priorities playing a guiding role by joining together with industry partners and leading government agencies. From all the above, the transfer of knowledge and competences requires the involvement of different stakeholders.

According to Centro europeo per lo sviluppo della formazione professionale “Vocational education and training (VET) is important. It has a dual role. It supports economic growth through increased competitiveness and promotes social cohesion by improving the employment and career prospects of everyone, from the most highly skilled to those with low levels of qualification” (CEDEFOP 2010).

Academia: industry collaborations Closer academia-industry collaborations aim at the development of learning and teaching contexts to increase the high qualified competences needed in competitive markets. This permits to strengthen the value of doctoral studies for job creation and to face bottlenecks for high skilled jobs in innovative industries.

The rapid spread of scientific and technological knowledge due to massive investment in new technologies, requires continuous skills and knowledge updating and upgrading.

In this perspective, new determinants and new contexts for successful education and training must be considered and adapted to the future requirements. In the recent years, experts widely discussed some of the current determinants for education for innovation: • Interdisciplinarity/Multidisciplinarity for the development of higher educational programmes to attract more young people fostering new entrepreneurship considering also gender equality.

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• Open mindset for high skilled jobs in real industry life in the new paradigms of the global economy. Adaptation enables to be capable to face technology advancements and R&D trends, exploiting academia backgrounds and networking. Flexibility will support new ways of working in dynamic contexts.

• Inspiring interest and stimulating curiosity for the increase of interests, fast reaction, awareness, excitement, emotion and capacity in human relations.

• Globalization for curricula and educational models at world level involving all stakeholders. Internationalization is achieved through the development of bilateral relations to support important exchange agreements and programmes between universities of EU member States and universities in USA and emerging markets’ countries.

• Network for a favourable environment for learning/training/working exchange in collaborative workplace.

• Behaviour for generic abilities that facilitate personal working habits and lifestyles such as team working, leadership, autonomy, problem solving, and so on.

To promote and develop these determinants, in high qualified people, are essential for innovation and jobs creation particularly for industries of the manufacturing sector. For the innovation of this sector many experiences and suggestions regarding strategic changes are available in the literature (Bhattacharya et al. 2010; O’Sullivan et al. 2009; Paci et al.

2008). Important foresight studies have been carried on the future of the manufacturing sector and of engineering education. They affirmed the importance to develop a “continuous model dissolving the three step model” and to provide “new modes of knowledge generation and competence” for industry involvement linked to the academia context (ManVis 2005).

A recommendation pointed out that engineering education will contribute to cultural advancements for innovation. In particular, for knowledge transfer in industrial education and training, a specific theme “Teaching Factory” will provide new mechanisms and tools to current and future engineers.

This approach to education for next generation of products and processes was further developed at European level (Jovane et al. 2009).

Earlier, in the United States, the American Society for Engineering Education reported an important experience of “Teaching Factory” that connected theory with applications (Alptekin et al. 2001). The Nanyang Polytechnic (2008) defined the “Teaching Factory concept as an approach that combines the learning and working environment from which realistic and relevant learning experiences arise”.

In Europe, Hummel and Westkamper (2006) made an important contribution providing the principles of the “Stuttgart Enterprise Model” that build the foundations of the Learning Factory for Industrial Advanced Engineering and

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the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 467. Also Chryssolouris and Mourtzis (2008) contributed to develop further the Teaching Factory initiative as a promising breakthrough for integrating the factory environment with the classroom concept.

The following initiatives contribute to higher education in the context of regional and city development as in the latest (OECD 2011) report.

In Lombardy, Assolombarda plays a key-role in developing mechanisms to align the local higher education provision with the industry’s needs, in terms of required qualified skills for the workforce. Can be mentioned, for example, the partnership carried on by Assolombarda with the Fondazione Politecnico within the (“Permanent Observatory on the expertise of engineers” 2008): a series of surveys carried on engineers employed in member-firms of Assolombarda (2011). At present the surveys have been lead on three branches of engineering studies: Mechanic, Electric and Energy. A new survey on Chemical Engineers is in preparation. Assolombarda is also actively involved in promoting master’s and PhD programmes to enhance innovation and knowledge transfer from university to industry. Particularly significant, at this purpose, is the experimental initiative “Executive PhD” promoted in Milan since 2008 by Assolombarda with the local universities. This initiative consists in joint PhD Programmes expressly designed and managed by a Company and an academic Department, focussing on an applied research project of industrial interest. The PhD students involved can be either young professionals of the companies themselves or freshmen concurrently hired by the company with a special training-contract called “Higher Education Apprenticeship” (Mengoni 2009).

Due to the need of high qualified people in strategic industries, relevant institutions have implemented high educational paths to interplay for the results achievement while ensuring the respective autonomies. Five initiatives of academia-industry collaborations -built on diverse types of agreements—for the innovative manufacturing sector in European countries, are reported below.

• GSaME (Graduate School of Excellence advanced Manufacturing Engineering) is a central scientific institution of the University of Stuttgart and has been funded under the Excellence Initiative since 2007. The school mission is “being better tomorrow than today”. The graduate school, as a higher education institution, takes care of the content and the organization of research work and the qualification of doctoral researchers in advanced manufacturing engineering. It promotes young scientists in a straightforward way on the basis of a specifically developed cooperative, interdisciplinary doctoral program. GSaME is integrated into a unique academic and industrial research environment to implement the

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principle of dual education. The graduate school aims to provide an excellent environment for doctoral research and education, leading to a doctor of engineering (Dr.Eng.) or doctor of economics and social science (Dr. rer. pol.) degree within 4 years. Several students have been graduated in the first cycle. GSaME fosters specialized doctoral studies in advanced industrial engineering in the following eight clusters: Stuttgart enterprise model, Digital and virtual engineering, Materials and process engineering, Networking in manufacturing, Information and communication technology for manufacturing, Knowledge-based management, Intelligent production systems, Sustainability in manufacturing. The student application is ruled by call for topic interest (GSaME 2007).

Learning Factories, an on-going initiative since 2004 by Festo AG worldwide leader in professional, industry-oriented qualification solutions for process and factory automation in the field of industrial training and vocational education (Festo 2011). An implementation example is iFactory an innovative training factory developed by the Institute of Industrial Manufacturing and Management (IFF) at the Universität Stuttgart and Festo Didactic for advanced Industrial Engineering (aIE) (iFactory 2009).

Sustainable Production Initiative is a concerted action

by Chalmers University of Technology and Lund University to produce leading edge knowledge for sustainable production. It mobilises more than 100 researchers in 15 existing research groups and six centres of excellence. The initiative is strongly backed by global Swedish industries. They will create a Community of Excellence with researchers, PhD candidates, MSc students, institute researchers and industrial experts in order to create conditions for continuous manufacturing innovation and possibilities to widely use the concepts of sustainable production engineering across industrial sectors (SPI 2010).

Ultra Precision and Structured Surfaces Integrated Knowledge Centre (UPS2 ), led by Cranfield University with the support of University College London, University of Cambridge and OpTIC. It is concerned with the manufacturing technologies relating to ultra precision and structured surfaces as applied to next generation products (UPS2 2011).

Fabbrica del Futuro, started in 2011 between the Italian Politecnico of Turin and Fiat Mirafiori with the aim to join in a common place a vehicles’ factory and a knowledge’s factory. The new campus is an integral part of Politecnico di Torino’s Mobility Campus (Cittadella della Mobilità) and hosts the degree courses Industrial Design and Visual Communication and Automotive Engineering adding value to high education, research, innovation capacity and design for sustainable mobility to continue to believe in the future of the automotive sector, as well as in research, innovation and design (Mirafiori 2011).

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These initiatives—that have been established in various locations in the Member States—can bring in their contribution to prepare schemes and guidelines at EU level to leverage the widespread of similar initiatives to create the Innovation Union.

Views from European countries In the perspective of developing competitive framework conditions, the European Commission promoted a consultation on seven horizontal non-technological issues that influence the innovation of the manufacturing sector. The result of this consultation is still of interest: in fact, the survey aimed to assess the priorities according to the stakeholders’ expectations at country level. The theme n. 6—regarding Education and training—was included in a choice of seven strategic themes: 1. “Build a more positive image for manufacturing”: Image 2. “Establish a European Research and Innovation Area for Manufacturing”: EMIRA 3. “Optimizing Research Programmes, Priorities and Organisational Convergence Focusing The Transformation Of Industry And Research“: Holistic 4. “Develop New Infrastructure (ICT and transport infrastructures are the network)”: Infrastructure & Framework 5. “Embed Innovation in Industry, Develop and Activate New Paths for Project Financing so that Projects Become Bankable”: Innovation & Project Financing 6. “Design and Implement the (European) Teaching Factory” with the scope of increase European engineering competences and place priority in technology transfer to manufacturing processes: Teaching Factory 7. “Sustainability issues and ERA dimension (optimizing research programmes and priorities)” within the European Research Area: ERA. The consultation analysis applied a qualitative-quantitative method with four indicators to describe the expect impact of each horizontal issue as reported below (Table 1).

The consultation was carried on in 2008 from January to June and involved 23 National Technological Platforms of the European Technology Platform ManuFuture (Caldeira 2010). Half of these NTPs were from Eastern Europe. Each NTP coordinator activated an internal consultation process and, in some cases, the final impact indicators were the average of the NTP members’ answers. The ranking of the seven themes is reported in Fig. 1.

The theme n.6—in short Teaching Factory—scored the second position after the theme Innovation & Project Financing.

J Intell Manuf (2013) 24:487–493 Table 1 Qualitative indicators and description

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Indicator

Description

Strong

Boosting the achievement of the objective, bringing determinant contributions that effect a breakthrough in the path forward, the lack of which might impede the achievement Strengthening the achievement of the objective, bringing substantial and essential contributions, the lack of which might weaken the achievement Moving towards the achievement of the objective (such as improving efficaciousness or efficient), bringing net and finalised although incremental contributions Supporting the course of main initiatives towards the objective, through helpful although important contributions

Significant

Step increase

Ancillary

Weight 4

3

2

1

Image 4,0 ERA

3,0

EMIRA

2,0 1,0 0,0 Teaching Factory

Holistic

Innovation & PF

Infrastr&Framew West average

Fig. 1 The ranking of the seven themes

East average

Image

Fig. 3 Themes’ impact for Growth & Jobs

Eastern Western

EMIRA Holistic Infrastr. & Framework Innovation & PF Teaching Factory ERA 0

1

2

3

4

Fig. 2 Results sorted by Western and Eastern countries

The detailed analysis of the responses sorted results by Western and Eastern countries. From this sorting, theme 6: Teaching Factory obtained the highest score for Eastern countries followed by a great consensus for the theme 3 “Optimizing research programmes, priorities and organisational convergence focusing the transformation of industry and research—Holistic” (Fig. 2). It is to note that a high interest was given to theme n. 3 Holistic from the Western countries. In fact, the holistic approach is the novel way to look at emerging complexities of the knowledge economy.

At the time of the consultation, the Lisbon Strategy was in force with its objectives Growth & Jobs, Energy & Climate Change and Social Welfare. These objectives are now integrated in the EU2020 strategy which promotes and aims to develop a holistic approach to all themes for innovation.

As reported below, the analysis of the responses, sorted by Western and Eastern countries, shows the modulation of all the 7 themes and the expected impact regarding jobs, green technologies and social welfare:

1. Teaching Factory is the top for the group of Eastern countries while Innovation & Project Financing is the top theme for the Western regarding occupation (Fig. 3); 2. Teaching Factory is top for the group of Eastern countries for green technologies (Fig. 4); 3. Teaching Factory is top for the group of Eastern countries related to social welfare (Fig. 5).

This consultation analysis was disseminated as a result related to the support action project (Paci and Lalle 2008).

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J Intell Manuf (2013) 24:487–493 Image 4,0 ERA

3,0

EMIRA

2,0 1,0 0,0 Teaching Factory

Holistic

Innovation & PF

Infrastr&Framew West average East average

Fig. 4 Themes’ impact for Energy & Climate Change Image 4,0 ERA

3,0

EMIRA

2,0 1,0 0,0 Teaching Factory

Holistic

Innovation & PF

Infrastr&Framew West average East average

Fig. 5 Themes’ impact for Social Welfare

Conclusions This overview aims to describe the intensity of initiatives in the area of higher education and training that are important enablers for a new trend for innovation.

On one side, there is the need to develop a deep examination of existing academia-industry collaborations and related schemes to prepare guidelines, at EU level, to leverage the widespread of similar initiatives to create the Innovation Union.

On the other side, it is important to put in practice a holistic approach to inter-relate higher education with innovation and labour market. With this approach, the EU strategy tries to overcome the actual separation and to maximize benefits for the socio-economic development of the European Area.

Internationalisation is an important aspect for creating a connected environment promoting new relationships and convergence to meet academia-industry mutual interests.

Particularly at PhD level, is also important to motivate students about the significance of knowledge development for prosperity and for individuals’ short and medium term

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high-skilled jobs’ careers. The surveyed perceptions can contribute to the involvement of stakeholders and actors of the whole European Union.

For the development of this process for change, universities and research institutions of the European countries hold a prominent role and are main stakeholders for a responsible future.

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