Teaching Open Innovation at the Universities in Latvia

Abstract

Change of innovation paradigm in society leads to new tendencies in business and related education. Recently the education paradigm has also changed and innovation came into education with introducing active learning, problem-based learning and a new type of pedagogy – innovation pedagogy.

Open innovation topic is centred to the working life, and its teaching is practice based, requiring wide range of knowledge and skills from the open innovation teachers.

The research question – are the universities and their academic staff ready to adapt to the change and which competences are necessary to successfully teach open innovation? The research aim is to summarize information on faculty skills for teaching innovation, to study the situation and tendencies in teaching open innovation in the higher education (HE) institutions in Latvia and to make conclusions and proposals on the necessary improvements.

The theoretical part is based on traditional constructivism pedagogy, active learning methodology and the latest innovation pedagogy research results of Turku University of Applied Sciences. Content analysis method has been used to identify the necessary skills for open innovation. The article tackles a problem of teaching open innovation in Latvia. Curricula of six HE institutions in Latvia have been reviewed and the faculty members interviewed on teaching open innovation. Analysis of results shows that awareness and skills of faculty must be enhanced.

Based on former studies on innovation skills, active learning methods and innovation teaching, as well as personal research experience and teaching innovation management, a set of open innovation teachers’ competences is proposed.