Staff, students and speakers
The Institute
of Management and Leadership Development (IMLD) organised a talk called
“Innovation in University: Impacts and Challenges” at Sungai Long Campus on
12 August 2016.
The talk
featured two international speakers known as Prof Robert Tijssen and Prof
Wong Poh Kam. Prof Robert Tijssen holds the positions of the Chair of
Science and Innovation Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, a
professorship at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and as an
international research partner at the Centre for Global Higher Education at
University College London in the United Kingdom. His current work interest
focuses on 21st century universities, the socioeconomic impacts
of science, and university rankings.
Meanwhile,
Prof Wong Poh Kam is a professor at the National University of Singapore’s
(NUS) School of Business and is director for the NUS Entrepreneurship
Centre. His achievements consist of publishing numerous international
refereed journals on innovation policy, industrial and competitiveness
policy, and technology entrepreneurship, while providing consultation for
international agencies.
The talk aimed
to bring about innovation in universities which seek to enhance their
research and its application to their work, and also to boost revenue
through university-industry partnerships. Ideally, an innovative university
possesses several organisational conditions such as well-equipped facilities
and equipment, adequate funding resources and managerial structures which
offer opportunities for novel research, teaching and training and enhanced
creativity, a culture of excellence that fosters competitiveness and
collaboration, performance-based incentives and reward systems, and human
resources management and strategy that promote and sustain innovation and
entrepreneurship.
In the talk,
Prof Tijssen spoke on his topic “Innovative University: From World
University Rankings to Entrepreneurial Academics”. The topic covered the
idea of an innovative university and the criteria to measure an innovative
university’s performance, along with its socioeconomic impacts and the
performance indicators for university-industry linkages.
“It is not
only about the research but also the quality of higher education. Innovative
universities are defined by enterprising staff and students with
high-quality lecturers and educators that develop professional coursework,
organisers of ground-breaking cultural events, and researchers that
cooperate with the industry to be involved in areas of consultancy,” said
Prof Tijssen.
Prof Wong on
his part shared his experiences in “Innovation and Entrepreneurship: The
Experience of NUS Enterprise”. He said, “If you really want to succeed, do
not look at the leaders alone, but also to look at the latecomers because it
is the latecomers that are going to leapfrog and come out with innovation.
While we try to learn from the best in the world, we must never copy. We
must try to adapt and try to achieve impacts where they matter the most.”
The two
speakers gave the audience some fascinating insights into innovation within
universities and the frameworks that may induce universities to grow and
make a greater impact on society.
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