IDEATION intends to transform participating higher education institutions (HEIs) into universities of significantly increased entrepreneurial and innovation capacity while enhancing their impact on surrounding ecosystems. This will be achieved by six dedicated actions boosting innovativeness and entrepreneurial skills, as well as preparing adaptation plans and transferring best practices from more experienced HEIs to other ones.

The project consortium represents five partners – four HEIs: Wrocław University of Science and Technology (Poland); Holon Institute of Technology (Israel); University of La Laguna (Spain); Institute for Industrial Management (Germany); and one business support organisation – Centre of Research and Technological Innovation (Italy). Aside from key players of the knowledge triangle, IDEATION will connect two additional aspects (society and sustainable development issues), which will complement the quintuple innovation helix model addressing university−industry−government−public−environment.

The objectives of the project are to:

• digitally open resources, raise awareness, and enable access to competencies, experiences and infrastructure through a new format of digital services;
• strengthen partnerships within the knowledge triangle by creating space for setting up collaborative networks and creating opportunities for establishing new cooperation;
• test and popularise open innovation-based approaches to directly speed up the innovation process within HEIs and their ecosystems;
• increase the quality of innovation and support entrepreneurial education via the pre-incubation programme and international open innovation training.

IDEATION’s unique approach is based on open innovation, sharing economy and social product development, as they are facing a major shift in the way people work, innovate and study. It is caused not only by the Industry 4.0 era and social media-based reality, but also a huge impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the way education and daily work has changed. IDEATION sees a path in HEIs transformation towards universities of increased entrepreneurial and innovation capacity through open science.

Through implementing an Innovation Vision Action Plan, the project will focus on:

• Action 1: Digital access to infrastructure;
• Action 2: Knowledge triangle networks;
• Action 3: Crowd innovation;
• Action 4: Testing crowdfunding opportunities;
• Action 5: Pre-incubation programme;
• Action 6: International open innovation training.

By implementing the actions, IDEATION aims to:

• support nine start-up/scale-ups;
• train 800 and mentor 66 students;
• train 170 and mentor 16 academic staff;
• train 170 and mentor 16 non-academic staff;
• improve 62 support structures and mechanisms;
• establish three new partnerships.

To ensure IDEATION outcomes will make a difference in terms of expected vision for 2030, all results will be assessed, lessons learned will be described, and transferability plans will be developed in a form of a ready-to-implement methodology to allow for an easy transfer and implementation to other departments/HEIs/entities.

Project coordinator

Mariusz Cholewa, Centre for Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (contact)

Project website

ideation-project.eu