Exploring The Role Of Innovation Spaces In Creating Stimulants And Opportunities For Innovative Universities Of Technology

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-134-0_7How to use a DOI?

Keywords

innovation; innovation outputs; universityies of technology; increase/enhance innovation outputs in South Africa and innovation spaces

Abstract

Universities are generally regarded as reservoirs of knowledge, and skills where academics generate novel and new ideas and initiatives. However, it has become apparent that the innovation outputs are not aligned with the potential that exists within the South African Universities of Technology (UoTs). Therefore, it is imperative to explore the role of innovation spaces in creating stimulants and opportunities for innovation at universities of technology and initiatives that can be adopted to increase the innovation outputs and harness the wealth of capabilities that exist within these spaces. Hence, this paper proposes the promotion of innovation spaces within the university as one initiative that can enhance and facilitate the spirit of innovation from the entire university community. It further asserts that properly designed and sufficiently resourced innovation spaces stimulate the creativity of users while providing an opportunity for the development of competencies and enhancing learning for the holistic development of students and staff. This innovation-enabling environment incorporates spaces or laboratories, academic communities of practice, funding and rewards policies and awareness programmes that encourage innovation. The presence or absence of such infrastructure as the virtual and physical spaces providing access to state-of-the-art information on pertinent issues of education, research, entrepreneurship and innovation, availability of facilities, and nurturing aid for start-up businesses and other entrepreneurial activities communicates and affirms the innovation culture of a university. Developing, harnessing, and cultivating the innovative capabilities of employees, will further benefit the universities from the inherent enhancement of intrapreneurial abilities.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Xolile Veronica Ngubane
AU  - Stephan van der Merwe
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/11/06
TI  - Exploring The Role Of Innovation Spaces In Creating Stimulants And Opportunities For Innovative Universities Of Technology
BT  - Proceedings of the 10th Focus Conference (TFC 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 94
EP  - 111
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-134-0_7
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-134-0_7
ID  - Ngubane2023
ER  -