From creativity to value creation

Abstract

In today’s world, globally interconnected, volatile, and characterized by a sky-rocketing complexity, significant and unprecedented interdisciplinary is required among various stakeholders to create resilient and innovative value chains. Within this compelling context, we focus on the new role that university-industry collaboration plays on a large scale in bridging the gap between idea generation and value creation to economy and society. A new way to promote attitude towards entrepreneurial leadership at an early stage among students and teachers is experienced by linking curricular and extracurricular teaching and contents, as well as by supporting voluntary learning “on demand” among students. Intertwined links are indeed possible within a nursery environment, so-called Entreprenursery, where students are encouraged to express their creativity, both by raising startup ideas and by solving companies’ technical and scientific issues. Entrepreneurial students are thus supported in their innovative ideas through collaboration with teachers, experts, entrepreneurs. They are also stimulated to engage other students to be part of an interdisciplinary team. Cooperation in supporting cross-fertilization of creative ideas will be fed by competencies, an openminded environment, and where diversity integration plays an important role. Only through different thinking is it possible to develop outstanding achievements. Coordination is guaranteed by a collaborative IT platform, which is also open to SMEs to facilitate them in involving entrepreneurial students. Within this new collaborative framework, all stakeholders will profit from reciprocal learning and creativity, increasing the entrepreneurial attitudes of students and teachers and thus accelerating the transfer of academic startup ideas into industrial applications and business opportunities.

Student Startup: Understanding the Role of the University in Making Startups Profitable Through University—Industry Collaboration

“…A study on the relationship between the quality of faculty and the performance of student startups shows that the “quality of faculty” has a positive relationship with enhancing the performance of startups (Showalter & Jensen, 2019). Furthermore, a study on a startup garage and its impact on student entrepreneur in Switzerland shows that the proficiency of faculties managing the program was instrumental to the success of the startups (Citraro et al, 2020). Also, a study on the role of the university in PhD student entrepreneurship concluded that both the quality of faculty and the content of the curriculum of the entrepreneurship program were both instrumental to the performance of students in developing their own enterprise (Muscio & Ramaciotti, 2019).…”

Organiblò: Engaging People in “Circular” Organizations and Enabling Social Sustainability

“…Especially in recent years, although "the idea of autonomous teams self-determining how to execute to achieve a pre-specified goal can be traced back at least to king Gustav II Adolph of 17th-century Sweden" [32], an increasing number of companies are nevertheless abandoning traditional hierarchical organizational structures in favor of more sustainable, flexible and collaborative approaches: the objective of these new structures is precisely to create a more agile and sustainable working environment focused on sharing responsibil-ities, the fluidity of information and continuous innovation [33]. Following millennials' main working ambitions [34], a circular organizational structure allows participants to act around an identified and shared mission, which in turn avoids the existence of a hierarchical chain of command but keeps functional areas of individual competences that allow for the achievement of holistic outcomes [35]. Especially in recent years, although "the idea of autonomous teams self-determining how to execute to achieve a pre-specified goal can be traced back at least to king Gustav II Adolph of 17th-century Sweden" [32], an increasing number of companies are nevertheless abandoning traditional hierarchical organizational structures in favor of more sustainable, flexible and collaborative approaches: the objective of these new structures is precisely to create a more agile and sustainable working environment focused on sharing responsibilities, the fluidity of information and continuous innovation [33].…”

“…Especially in recent years, although "the idea of autonomous teams self-determining how to execute to achieve a pre-specified goal can be traced back at least to king Gustav II Adolph of 17th-century Sweden" [32], an increasing number of companies are nevertheless abandoning traditional hierarchical organizational structures in favor of more sustainable, flexible and collaborative approaches: the objective of these new structures is precisely to create a more agile and sustainable working environment focused on sharing responsibilities, the fluidity of information and continuous innovation [33]. Following millennials' main working ambitions [34], a circular organizational structure allows participants to act around an identified and shared mission, which in turn avoids the existence of a hierarchical chain of command but keeps functional areas of individual competences that allow for the achievement of holistic outcomes [35].…”

“…Perhaps because of this they are more in tune with circular organizations than tall ones [61]. In fact, circular organizational structures allow employees to act around a shared, previously commonly identified corporate mission to fulfil their tasks by avoiding a hierarchical chain of command but by keeping functional areas related to individual competences in order to achieve holistic outcomes [35]. Organiblò's circular organization is indeed more open, collaborative and innovative and aims at being more likely to succeed in the long run.…”