Benchmarking innovation and entrepreneurship practices in Dublin

Our group in Innovation Academy

YIE staff from Lapland UAS is further exploring good practices on innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems and this time gained beneficial experiences during benchmarking visits to Dublin. The trip took place on 17-21 March, 2014. The participants were the head of RDI of Business and Culture Marika Saranne, Project manager Eila Seppänen, the leader of InnoBarentsLab (IBL) and project coordinator at the Rovaniemi campus Anzelika Krastina, senior lecturers Tuija Kuisma and Kaisa Lammi. Lessons learnt

Innovation Academy

during the visits will add greatly to further development of InnoBarentsLab and other entrepreneurship support activities within the project.

InnoBarentsLab is considered to be the place where students and aspiring entrepreneurs can work on different innovation projects, developing business ideas, preparing for start-ups, but the main aim is to develop entrepreneurial and innovative mind-sets. Therefore in this benchmark trip we were focusing on similar activities in Dublin.

Bridget Noone, Enterprise Executive introduces to
Trinity College Dublin Entrepreneurship programme

Visiting University College Dublin, Innovation Academy and Entrepreneurship Campus of Trinity College Dublin proved that creating entrepreneurship ecosystem such as IBL and similar is the core for supporting entrepreneurial endeavours. It was mentioned that Dublin is considered as a “Silicon Valley of Europe”. Innovation is seen as integral part of entrepreneurship and  is nurtured and encouraged by the numerous support mechanisms in both institutions. Entrepreneurship Campus of Trinity

Pitching

College Dublin provides post-graduate entrepreneurship education programmes. Additionally whether needed it offers incubation or access to accelerator programs. The campus has 16,000 sq.m. of lettable space for small and medium-sized enterprises and provides them for free for half a year or more for the start-ups of their students.

Innovation Academy of University College Dublin is an internationally recognised exemplar of best-practice in innovation and entrepreneurship education. We were lucky to

The poster of the idea

participate in the educational workshops as well as during the pitching of the ideas in Innovation Academy. It must be noted that the students of Innovation and Entrepreneurship programme are coming from different study fields and in one group together works a lawyer, architect, retired military person and a businessman. It was said that the multidisciplinary teams is the core of innovation and during the pitching it was very interesting to see that people can come up with most unexpected solutions to given business

Young entrepreneurs working in the premises
of the Entrepreneurship campus

challenges, and this is exactly what host companies are expecting.

During this trip we gained also new prospectives from Dublin Chamber of Commerce, where we were informed about the practices of implementation of Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs programme. The programme is aimed to support young entrepreneurs to develop their skills in business management through an exchange in an enterprise run by experienced entrepreneurs in another European country. The host Marion Jammet expressed her believe in the importance of

With Irish students during the workshop

such programme and to the surprise of all confirmed that in their experience there are only success stories, meaning that both – the host company and young entrepreneurs have only benefited from such cooperation across the borders.

Common conclusion of our group is that these visits are of great educational value and extremely inspirational. One of the hosts encouraged us that we are on the right track in terms of promotion of young entrepreneurship in the Barents and that nothing happens overnight. Innovativeness is a way of thinking that we need to spark into our region and therefore we need more projects such as YIE.

In the incubator of students' start-ups

One of the most significant outcomes is a mutual agreement to cooperate between University College Dublin, Innovation Academy and Lapland UAS in the future. Creation of entrepreneurial ecosystem wasa topic for potential future joint project. It is also a good achievement from the sustainability point of view of YIE project outcomes.

Some thoughts and quotes as a reflection of the visits:

• “Space matters!” It is important to have inspirational space for students where to work at any time of the day.
• “Creative thinking” + “Entrepreneurship thinking” + “Application to own context” – the core triangle of entrepreneurship educational programmes.
• Our job is not to advise, but to conceptualize.
• Entrepreneurship mix of Innovation Academy: Large and SMEs, profit and non-profit – because the world is not a single colour.
• Train the trainers!
• Entrepreneurship should not be an academic school, we make people to THINK. Our school is constant debate!
• Early stage ideation is important.
• Action based and experience based learning.
• We teach the opportunity recognition.
• Entrepreneurship environmental factor matters. You have to have at least one strong supporter from the top administration!
• There is no shortcut – Trinity College Dublin works 26 years with Entrepreneurships programme and still many things are to be developed. 

At the University College Dublin campus