Aim of the project

 

Transfer of INNOVATRAIN Project has been realized over the years 2012-2014 under the Leonardo da Vinci: Transfer of Innovation Programme. INNOVATRAIN TRANSFER project was aimed to help SMEs increase and keep high level of their innovativeness and competitiveness by providing means for company staff for improvement of understanding of importance and relevance of innovation process and its control. Project approach was to offer advanced training for reasonable price which cover SMEs needs in all innovation aspects area including different aspects, for ex ample such as innovative advanced technological solutions.

 

Short description

 

Project idea was to realize the ambitious goal of transfer and adaptation of existing results from a successful national (Spanish) project, partnership containing institutions from different countries.

 

Among many theoretical and practical elaborations of different innovation aspects and innovation management approaches two courses based on the two successful projects, INNOVATRAIN and AIM – Acceleration of Innovative Ideas to Market, were selected to be integrated and transferred in the new e-learning course intended to fill the gap between the current innovation management practice and the state-of-the-art achievements in this domain.

 

Thus the main objective of the INNOVATRAIN TRANSFER project was to create e-learning based courses dealing with approaches and solutions for an advanced innovation process management and introduction of the innovation standards in SMEs, targeting increasing SME’s innovation potential. Training include content related to the acquisition of new ideas and knowledge to improve the enterprise, the development of its products, stimulating industrial innovation, customer interaction, shared use of knowledge and innovation process management methods.

 

Elaborated project methodology contains information needed for organization and delivering effective training including guidelines for content creation, putting into ICT system, proposed structure of lessons/training and guidelines for course execution.

 

Results of the project

 

Major results achieved during the project are directly connected with the identified project objectives. Training curriculum includes content related to the acquisition of new ideas and knowledge to support the innovation process in enterprises, to stimulating industrial innovation, and to innovation process management methods. The course developed in the project is divided into two training modules and provides trainees with global and systematized approach to the important innovation related concepts and helps professionals in implementation of an Innovation Management System within their own organizations, covering all process from the concept phase to the analysis of the impact, and guidelines for organisations in introducing, developing and maintaining a framework for systematic innovation management practices. The content of the Module 1 “Innovation and Innovation Management in general” is based mainly on the results of the project AIM from which the approach for development of a system to support the collection of innovative ideas and relevant knowledge throughout the extended enterprise for fostering industrial innovations. The AIM content was enriched with some general basics about innovation and innovation management. It is intended to provide the most important general topics about the innovation and to support both newcomers and professionals in implementing an advanced Innovation Management approach and supporting ICT System in their organisations, covering the whole process from the process inception to the analysis of the impact. Module 2 “Introduction of the Innovation Management Standard” is extension of the course INNOVATRAIN dealing with introduction of the Spanish standard UNE 166000:2006 – Research, Development and Innovation (R&D&i) Management. The INNOVATRAIN methodology was enriched through elaboration of new learning bilingual scenarios including classical training, blended training, and distant training. New implemented ICT features include web 2.0 possibilities for increasing effectivity of learning through contact between pupils, teachers and consultants.

 

Project results comprise:

• Full set of lessons of the courses on General Innovation and introduction of the Innovation Standard, exemplified on the Spanish standard UNE 166000:2006 Research, Development and Innovation (R&D&i) Management. Lessons are structured into two modules according to the thematic groups,
• Training methodology consists of guidelines for INNOVATRAIN TRANSFER system establishment, utilization, administration and further evaluation. It includes methods for adaptation and creation of course content as well as organisation and execution of the course prepared for trainers and consultants creating and carrying out the course, useful also for others interested for organisation of course,
• Adapted ICT platform based on the worldwide accepted moodle LMS, which enables user friendly navigation through the logically structured content and includes parts, animations and videos illustrating specific phases along the innovation process.
• A set of templates for data gathering and analysis containing survey and structured interview, prepared during the initial stage of the project. It is available in English and all partner languages.

 

Assessment / feedback from users

 

Project assessment was done by:

• internal assessment done by project partners. This assessment was based on one of project results “Project Set of templates for users requirements gathering nad analysis”,
• external evaluation done by experts from all partner countries,
• evaluation done by Polish National Agency of Leonardo da Vinci Programme.

 

In general the INNOVATRAIN TRANSFER system was assessed as good. From the performed assessment it can be concluded that apart minor difficulties in course navigation, connected with e.g. not working buttons, overall system functionality was clear, intuitive and easy in utilization. The respondents in general gave also positive feedback to the course content. They provided also some recommendations which will be taken into consideration during the commercial version preparation. The addressed issues included rethinking the titles of the lessons/courses to make them more interesting for students, improvement of the evaluation process, adding the real case studies/examples of the existing companies, and providing more external links to additional materials connected with course contents.

 

Lessons learned

 

During realization of project and contact with end-users mainly from enterprises, INNOVATRAIN TRANSFER project partners gained new knowledge about innovation, especially how innovation is recognized by companies, real innovation level and real training needs in this area. That information shall help to organize new related to innovation trainings.