06 March, 2018

A seminar on how to prepare students to work creatively and collaboratively within Industry took place on Wednesday, 6th of March, at Cork Institute of Technology, as part of CIT’s Innovation Week. 

The annual educators’ seminar, organised by Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence, is part of a series which aims to address issues currently facing the rapidly changing education environment.

The primary education goal is to ensure graduates have the best technical skills possible, but graduates also need to be creative, and successfully collaborate to meet businesses’ innovation and entrepreneurial needs.  So, how can educators nurture and strengthen the creativity and collaboration skills without losing focus on the core technical abilities? This seminar set out to explore how Design Thinking and Project Management skills can be used within undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, to provide students with these innovation and entrepreneurial skills.

The seminar welcomed Keith Finglas from Innovation Delivery to facilitate the workshop style event.  Keith is an engineer with 32 years’ experience as a project manager working for General Electric, Guinness and Intel. His final role with Intel was running the Project Office in Intel’s European Innovation Centre in Ireland.

A lively and practical discussion took place among attendees on how the techniques might work for CIT - what are the capabilities, challenges/risks and advantages for Students, Lecturers and SMEs?

The agenda for the busy morning included:
• Innovation, definition and discussion
• Design Thinking and Project Management Definitions
• Case studies (Students and SMEs)
• Discussions and Q&A.

Dr Helen McGuirk, Head of the Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence, in closing the workshop, highlighted the number of lecturers present from across the four CIT campuses and outreach centres.   This she said, strengthens CIT’s vibrant Entrepreneurship Ecosystem and nurtures innovation and entrepreneurship-mind-set in our students and staff. 

CIT Innovation Week takes place every year hosting a number of events aiming to promote innovation and entrepreneurship amongst staff members, students and the wider community.
Cork Institute of Technology continues to excel in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship education, recently hosting the highly successful 3E Conference - ECSB Entrepreneurship Education Conference in May 2017. This conference is the premier European research conference in the field attracting researchers and educators from around the world.