LEBIC - A Learning System for the Development&Implementation of Innovations in Enterprises

A Learning System for the Development&Implementation of Innovations in Enterprises - InnoSupport

A Leonardo da Vinci Pilot Project
with Partners from Germany, Greece, the UK, Latvia, Austria and Romania
October 2003 – September 2005

TARGET GROUPS OF PROJECT

Employees of small and mid-sized enterprises in the context of career training and especially the development of innovative processes.

PROJECT NEED

The need for innovations is a hotly debated topic nowadays. We would like to (and have to) be innovative, but how will we achieve this? Contrary to popular opinion, innovations have less to do with inspiration than with systematic work. To be effective and successful, this work should develop according to pre-determined process strategies. We should therefore be familiar with these strategies. Research has indicated that this area of learning (relevant also for the private sector) only plays a peripheral role in occupational training. One of the reasons for this may be found in the fact that appropriate learning methods for the acquisition of this considerably complex area of learning have not (yet) been made sufficiently available.

PROJECT AIM

Improved competetiveness, but also the existential security of small and medium sized enterprises, call for the continuous intitiation and consequent implementation of renewal processes. With the proposed system of educational building blocks, the project aims to close a gap in occupational education. This will be achieved through the acquisition of competencies for the application of the innovation methodology through illustrative, practical and simply constructed learning materials.

PRODUCTS

Teaching and Training Material „Modular System Innovation Methodology“
The innovation methodology will provide the methodological tools that support the development and the implementation within enterprises of new products, services and organisational solutions, which improve the regional and international competetiveness of enterprises.

In place of the countless creative methods, the practising engineers, managers and other employees will be provided with an applicable methodic toolbox, which takes into account modern aspects of educational research and the design of learning software containing structures immediately applicable for working task solutions (“working” software).

Contrary to general practice, not the individual phases of the innovation process (e.g. the search for new designs or the patent elaboration or the marketing) will be taken into consideration. Instead these processes will be dealt with in their totality and combination through the connection between learning and project work.

The educational building blocks thus become concrete instructions and orientations for actions, which will be made available as “working” and learning software and – to meet the different needs of SMEs in the partner countries – also as handbook.

BENEFITS

Improvement of practice based further education for:

Specialists and Managers in small and medium sized enterprises
Research and Development Personnel
Construction and Process Design Personnel
Marketing and Services Personnel

Complex requirements in relation to innovations can be easier taken into account, as for example legal questions relating to patents, intercultural competence for international marketing etc.

Innovative know-how reaches the small and medium-sized companies without extensive further education courses and instead through educational programmes offered in the workplace and made more attractive to target groups who can control the learning themselves.

Companies can increase their competitiveness by improving their know-how of the ways in which (substitute) innovations can be worked out and of how actual profits can be achieved through appropriate actions.
The results can be transferred to occupational education as well as to higher and further education.

More info: www.mvlink.de/innosupport.

If you are interested in the project results, please contact the following persons in Latvia:

Linda Runkovska
Executive director of LEBIC
INNOSUPPORT project manager in Latvia
Ph.: +371 7542184
E-mail: lebic@lebic.lv

Laila Eliņa
Latvijas Tehnoloģiskā Parka projektu vadītāja
Ph.: +371 7210808
E-mail: laila.elina@rtu.lv
Gintas Janušonis
Latvijas Tehnoloģiskā Centra projektu vadītājs
Ph.: +371 7558702
Fax: +371 7541218
E-mail: gintas@edi.lv

Last Updated ( Sunday, 03 April 2005 )

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