Engineering Students as Innovation Facilitators for Enterprises

Abstract

This paper addresses the role that Engineering Master Students may play in contributing to the development of innovationfor enterprises. Based on a formalized tripartite cooperation between a student, an enterprise and a Danish university, theprogramme combines traditional academic curricula with a mentor company. Drawing on the concepts of Mode 2knowledge production and knowledge governance the circumstances under which these innovations can take place aredescribed and analysed. The empirical material is taken from a longitudinal study (2009-2011) of the master programme;the study combines qualitative and quantitative approaches. Both students and enterprises assess the master programmevery positively and more than half of the companies confirmed that the students have contributed to innovation processes.The analysis shows how formal and informal governance mechanisms need to complement each other in order to enable asuccessful progression for all the parties involved. However the study also underlines that the master programme faceschallenges which are usually not part of engineering curricula, for example, improving students’ social and communicationcompetences and autonomy