Dan Remenyi
Today more than ever Innovation and entrepreneurship skills are needed by both individuals starting out on new business endeavours and to employers. But there has always been an issue surrounding how to teach and learn these skills. Some universities offer degrees or other courses in these subjects, whilst others incorporate these topics in a variety of different degrees. But whatever approach the university takes these topics are quite challenging to teach, and also difficult to research. Courses and modules on these subjects are quite theoretical and often they neither deliver the practical knowhow required nor do they inspire students to become innovators or entrepreneurs. Fortunately, some good work is being done in this field in various parts of the world and this annual competition highlights such initiatives.The response this year to the 9th Teaching Innovation and Entrepreneurship Excellence Awards has reflected the innovative initiatives in place in many parts of the world. With 20 initial submissions, 14 competitors were invited to send in a full case history describing their initiative. The range of subjects written about in the case histories has certainly been extensive and the panel of reviewers had their job cut out for them to find the most interesting, creative and innovative case histories and short list them to the finalists published in this anthology. 8 authors or groups of authors have been invited to present their work at the European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship supported by Universidade Portucalense, Porto, Portugal. The topics which will be addressed are listed in the Contents page of this book.
