Emma O’Brien

Educational programmes for future employability of graduates in SMEs

There are many levels of learning, training, and upskilling within SMEs and these encapsulate varying combinations of formal and informal learning activities. However not all SMEs are proactive in their learning situations and a large proportion of SMEs are in constant ‘crisis management’ mode and therefore need to be encouraged to adopt a learning, training and upskilling environment if they want to survive and prosper. Recent research managed by the Programme for University and Industry Interface at the University of Limerick, Ireland (PUII in Available on line at: http://www.ul.ie/~puii/ (accessed January 21st, 2008)) was charged with identifying key skills and competencies required by individuals in SMEs to ensure their future generation employability. What clearly emerged from this piece of work was the articulation of a range of diverse interventions, which SMEs feel are required to enable them to expand their organizational capacity and the capability of their employees. However, the learning delivery models developed to date for the upskilling of individuals in industry have largely failed to get to the heart of the matter for the SME and are not sufficient to bridge the gap between the needs of the individual in the SME and the needs of the organization. To this end, SME-specific learning delivery models are urgently required to build and create innovative and sustainable learning environments in SMEs, which will simultaneously develop both the individual and the organization. This paper discusses the needs of SMEs in terms of learning and illuminates the need for new innovative programmes which will mark a new step in supporting the delivery on the global priority of educating and upskilling the workforce.

IT-Based Knowledge Management Systems to Support the Design of Product Development Processes

In today’s dynamic business world, the ability to continuously innovate and respond to customers’ needs is fundamental to success. To enable companies to do this a thorough understanding of their internal processes is required. Experiments can provide significant opportunities for companies to generate knowledge about their product development processes. This chapter examines the role of experimentation in designing robust product development processes and the role of information technology in supporting this. It outlines an IT-based knowledge management system to support the creation, transfer, and the use of knowledge amongst engineers in designing and conducting experiments that lead to robust product development processes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the key issues for future research in this area.

Engaging SMEs in Cooperation and New Forms of Learning

Globalization has strong if contradictory impacts on SMEs. The sharp increase of worldwide competition in recent decades weakened SMEs right across the board. At the same time, globalization offers many new opportunities and the importance of SMEs has increased. Opportunties include the potential to act as collaborators in multi-enterprise consortia, for international clients and partners. Their importance has increased because of their specific potential, such as high specialization and the ability to react faster than big enterprises. Therefore, it is important for such companies to take up the challenge to operate on a global scale. To be able to play this role, SMEs have to tackle change and develop their learning processes on a far-reaching scale. If the triangle and interplay of continuous learning, knowledge management and new technologies, is key in making or breaking companies as well as national and supranational entities (such as the EU), it is important new means of addressing these areas, particularly through the use of ICT are explored. While ICT and especially web 2.0 applications – social networks, blogging, web repositories and shared resources, modern learning platforms – have great potential to support and enable SMEs in their drive towards competitiveness, the realization of this potential is by no means automatic. Success depends on a strategic approach, technical skills and facilities. This paper takes a closer look at the situation of European SMEs and presents findings from recent European projects identifying the ongoing problems in the adoption of new forms of learning. Secondly the paper discusses learning approaches and web-based technologies particularly suitable for SMEs.

Fostering skills for digital social innovations in entrepreneurship education

Abstract The Digital transformation of society, industry requires new approaches in education to prepare students to deal with technological change. Digital Social Innovation (DSI) is an emerging field, and little known about digital social innovators, organizations, and activities which support them and the use of digital tools for social change. Education must be at the core of society’s response to these powerful forces. Digital social innovations and corresponding skills should be used in all sectors of education and training, because technology skills are essential for global citizenship. Such innovations can be particularly efficient in teaching entrepreneurial skills. In this paper after a presentation of the connection between DSI and entrepreneurship education we give some methods to improve it and examples of projects in this context.