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The case for design-mediated innovation pedagogy

University of British Columbia

Innovation is a key driver for growth and is considered critical to a sustainable economy. Across the globe, governments and industries continue to invest significantly in innovation-development activities with mixed results. In early 2016, the government of Canada published its innovation agenda in response to its mediocre innovation performance. It identified the lack of innovation-ready citizens as one critical action area and the need for Canadians to develop an innovative mindset. This dissertation investigates how a design method could improve understanding of the innovation process and increase individual and organizational innovative capacity. An interdisciplinary literature review provides insights into how the innovation process happens and helps define the competencies associated with innovative capacity or individual innovativeness. Findings from a document analysis and two action-research studies are translated into a visualization of the innovation process and a competencies framework for both classrooms and organizations. A design-mediated innovation pedagogy is proposed to develop key innovativeness competencies commonly associated with innovators. This pedagogical model suggests a shift from entrepreneurship to innovatorship education. My research contributes knowledge in understanding the ways in which individuals and their organizations learn to think, act and work in innovative ways. It offers implications for the application and future research of design-based innovation pedagogy models inside Canadian classrooms, business studios and global organizations.

Text

2017-01-21

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/60138

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/