Internationalisation is the expansion of a firms operations to foreign markets and includes not only import and export but also foreign direct investments and international cooperation. Today’s globalising economy has resulted in a growing number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) undertaking international activities. Internationalisation has been shown to be very beneficial for firms. Cross-border activities are an important means through which SMEs are able to create value, generate growth and access new knowledge and technologies. A strong relation has also been found between innovation and internationalisation: innovation may both be necessary to enter foreign markets as well as be a consequence of a firm’s foreign market activities. In addition to value creation at the firmlevel, crossborder entrepreneurship is assumed to create wealth at an economy wide level. With so many evident benefits to internationalisation, why don’t more SMEs internationalise? In her inaugural lecture Anne van Delft will illustrate the importance of “cooperation within networks” in international business. In today’s “network economy” it is important for firms to leverage their networks. Managing the interplay between networks and knowledge will be one of the key challenges for the 21st century. Cooperation with other firms is especially important for SMEs because it allows firms to utilise their limited resources in the most efficient way. Some of the sectors in the Rotterdam region are world leaders but nevertheless their main competitor might soon come from an emerging market rather than form within the regional cluster. The benefits of cooperation and knowledge sharing should therefore be exploited fully by SMEs in the Rotterdam region as global competition increases.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.14261/postit/5F1BA34B-4057-418E-96A87AD8B9F13A54In 2015 and 2016, Saxion University of Applied Sciences organized the 2nd and 3rd edition of the Regional Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference (RIEC).Throughout Europe universities are opening up more and more to society, as part of the ideas of a "third mission of universities" suggested by Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff in their triple helix model. Part of this is the increasing attention for university – business relations and the emergence of more and more practical student business projects. Whereas the effects of such projects on the learning results of students are well researched, the effects of such projects on the companies appears to be under researched and fuzzy. This article is a case study about measuring the results of a yearly recurring international university – business student cooperation project. The project consists of students working together in international teams to solve a business problem for a company. This article provides a methodology and an attempt to measure the impact of such projects on companies
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Sarah Banks (2012) describes ethics work mainly as the effort people put into developing themselves as good practitioners. She discerns six aspects of ethics work: identity work, framing work, reason work, emotion work, role work and performance work. Although ethics work focuses on the ethical development of individual practitioners within their profession, the concept and all its aspects can be transferred into an ethical guideline for the collective development of practitioners in interprofessional cooperation. As such the concept of collective interprofessional ethics work can also be used as a set of criteria for the ethical evaluation of interprofessional cooperation, as is shown on the basis of an experiment in Belgium
The focus of this project is on improving the resilience of hospitality Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) by enabling them to take advantage of digitalization tools and data analytics in particular. Hospitality SMEs play an important role in their local community but are vulnerable to shifts in demand. Due to a lack of resources (time, finance, and sometimes knowledge), they do not have sufficient access to data analytics tools that are typically available to larger organizations. The purpose of this project is therefore to develop a prototype infrastructure or ecosystem showcasing how Dutch hospitality SMEs can develop their data analytic capability in such a way that they increase their resilience to shifts in demand. The one year exploration period will be used to assess the feasibility of such an infrastructure and will address technological aspects (e.g. kind of technological platform), process aspects (e.g. prerequisites for collaboration such as confidentiality and safety of data), knowledge aspects (e.g. what knowledge of data analytics do SMEs need and through what medium), and organizational aspects (what kind of cooperation form is necessary and how should it be financed).
Digital transformation has been recognized for its potential to contribute to sustainability goals. It requires companies to develop their Data Analytic Capability (DAC), defined as their ability to collect, manage and analyze data effectively. Despite the governmental efforts to promote digitalization, there seems to be a knowledge gap on how to proceed, with 37% of Dutch SMEs reporting a lack of knowledge, and 33% reporting a lack of support in developing DAC. Participants in the interviews that we organized preparing this proposal indicated a need for guidance on how to develop DAC within their organization given their unique context (e.g. age and experience of the workforce, presence of legacy systems, high daily workload, lack of knowledge of digitalization). While a lot of attention has been given to the technological aspects of DAC, the people, process, and organizational culture aspects are as important, requiring a comprehensive approach and thus a bundling of knowledge from different expertise. Therefore, the objective of this KIEM proposal is to identify organizational enablers and inhibitors of DAC through a series of interviews and case studies, and use these to formulate a preliminary roadmap to DAC. From a structure perspective, the objective of the KIEM proposal will be to explore and solidify the partnership between Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas), Avans University of Applied Sciences (Avans), Logistics Community Brabant (LCB), van Berkel Logistics BV, Smink Group BV, and iValueImprovement BV. This partnership will be used to develop the preliminary roadmap and pre-test it using action methodology. The action research protocol and preliminary roadmap thereby developed in this KIEM project will form the basis for a subsequent RAAK proposal.
Teachers have a crucial role in bringing about the extensive social changes that are needed in the building of a sustainable future. In the EduSTA project, we focus on sustainability competences of teachers. We strengthen the European dimension of teacher education via Digital Open Badges as means of performing, acknowledging, documenting, and transferring the competencies as micro-credentials. EduSTA starts by mapping the contextual possibilities and restrictions for transformative learning on sustainability and by operationalising skills. The development of competence-based learning modules and open digital badge-driven pathways will proceed hand in hand and will be realised as learning modules in the partnering Higher Education Institutes and badge applications open for all teachers in Europe.Societal Issue: Teachers’ capabilities to act as active facilitators of change in the ecological transition and to educate citizens and workforce to meet the future challenges is key to a profound transformation in the green transition.Teachers’ sustainability competences have been researched widely, but a gap remains between research and the teachers’ practise. There is a need to operationalise sustainability competences: to describe direct links with everyday tasks, such as curriculum development, pedagogical design, and assessment. This need calls for an urgent operationalisation of educators’ sustainability competences – to support the goals with sustainability actions and to transfer this understanding to their students.Benefit to society: EduSTA builds a community, “Academy of Educators for Sustainable Future”, and creates open digital badge-driven learning pathways for teachers’ sustainability competences supported by multimodal learning modules. The aim is to achieve close cooperation with training schools to actively engage in-service teachers.Our consortium is a catalyst for leading and empowering profound change in the present and for the future to educate teachers ready to meet the challenges and act as active change agents for sustainable future. Emphasizing teachers’ essential role as a part of the green transition also adds to the attractiveness of teachers’ work.
