Sebastian Kopera

The Role of Creativity in Development of Innovation in Tourism

Creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship are slogans that have become an integral part of modern tourism economy. Creativity and innovation of tourism economy as well as the meaning of creativity in tourism business are intensely discussed. Today, creativity is being frequently analyzed as a basic feature of actions performed on a daily basis in terms of both personal and professional life, a feature that every employee is required to possess. It means that employers and, above all, the education system must feel it necessary to develop certain conditions in which human creativity can be shaped, which is understood as a system that enables us to adjust to constantly changing environment and take a risk to apply new solutions to particular problems. The article aims to present the role of creativity in development of innovation in tourism as well as factors that improve it. The analytical part of the article will concentrate on the analysis of, inter alia, two significant groups of creativity determinants: factors related to availability of qualified staff on the local labor market as well as info-structure of tourism businesses.

Interdisciplinarity in Tech Startups Development – Case Study of ‘Unistartapp’ Project

Abstract Empirical data as well as scientific reports confirm that startups require diverse, in-house competencies in order to achieve market success. However, while technology-related competencies are usually brought to new tech ventures by their founders, there is a significant deficiency of market- and management-related competencies, which is reflected in the statistics of common startup failure reasons. In this context, a question arises: how interdisciplinarity of knowledge and competencies can be built into the very core of tech startups? The text addresses this question by zeroing in on the role of universities in this process. In the first part, the specificity of tech startups is analyzed. The next chapter overviews the hitherto academy-related startup education environment together with its shortcomings as far as interdisciplinarity is concerned. Finally, the case study of innovative and interdisciplinary academic ecosystem, which was built and tested within the project UniStartApp, is presented and discussed together with related lessons learned. The text is concluded with final remarks on challenges involved in embedding interdisciplinarity into startup education ecosystem.