Activities
Read more about Innovationz and our mission, overview of our activities and our origins. Follow the links on the left hand side to information about our various and more specific activities.
Challenge
Huge challenges face New Zealand manufacturing SMEs. Like in most countries, they have to design and make technology intensive products, and they have to capture the imagination of customers worldwide. Such products have to be attractive, innovative and competitive in the global marketplace. The growth of the economy and the prosperity of the nation largely depend on such products and the businesses that generate them.
But how are companies in NZ, a small and remote country, to achieve such important ambitions? The answer has to be, in part, through a superior and world leading tertiary education with close ties to industry.
The Innovationz project addresses these difficult issues. We take on skills shortages and knowledge gaps in the area of innovative NPD on a broad and multi-disciplinary basis.
Mission
The INNOVATIONZ project aims
to stimulate innovation and new approaches to New Product Development in three important and interlinked areas: education, research and practice.
Key to the project is the integration of the disciplines of engineering, design and business; and we (the Innovationz team) have initiated an educational and collaborative infrastructure across technology, business and design.
Our goals are to
- develop excellence in design, technology and manufacturing know-how.
- foster manufacturing technology and engineering based products
- to support export-oriented SME
Overview
There are three strands to our work - teaching, research and industrial collaboration. They overlap and intersect. There is a natural continuity from one to the other. They can be seen as three chronological phases in the generation, deployment and transfer of knowledge. Ultimately this knowledge becomes distributed and embedded in the best procedures and skills. We seek to construct informed and reflective practice in NPD.
We seek to bridge long-standing gaps between technology, creative arts and management processes. Beyond that we wish to find a resolution between commercial targets and social goals. The NPD processes at one level are pragmatic and functional. They are aimed at producing better products, improving efficiencies and enlarging the profitability of companies. But these goals only make sense, if they are contained in within a wider value system. Such a system would be pluralistic. It will operate according to the triple bottom line of economic environment and ethical criteria. Innovation is about doing the right thing well.
TEACHING
Our educational activities include teaching and support material for undergraduates and postgraduates. The focus of these courses is innovation and NPD. We also undertake short courses for SMEs and our industrial partners. Other activities such as internships, placements and specific training activities run across the interface between the academic and commercial environments.
RESEARCH
Research and analytical studies also centre upon NPD practices. We seek to clarify, improve and enlarge practices within manufacturing organizations. We use a repertoire of scholarly techniques to build case studies and to offer global benchmarks. One part of that work lies in clarifying models of innovation, and visualisation techniques. These models and tools reveal hidden organisational practices and provide a means of critique and improvement. Some work is more project specific and diagnostic. We seek to extend skills and capabilities of our industrial partners. All this goes under the general heading of action research, in which researchers are committed participant observers and engaged catalysts.
COLLABORATION
In both teaching and research, we seek synthesis between theory and practice, between education and industry We also seek to integrate the development work across various professional disciplines who are traditionally educated in separate silos.. Only after graduating and through later work experience do graduates find out that their rapport with other disciplines and their ability to work in teams is crucial to both their personal success and that of the employing organisations.
Origins
The origins of Innovationz come from a more than 15 year collaboration betweeen industry and Dr Rainer Seidel and his colleagues at the University of Auckland.
At first, the main emphasis was on engineering problems, manufacturing processes and manufacturing management. Yet Dr Seidel and his team came to see that other dimensions were vital to the success of local businesses' dimensions, such as innovation management, marketing, creativity and design.
The whole of innovation is much more than the sum of its professional parts.
Moreover, in this spirit Dr Seidel began to build a pragmatic base for the comprehensive education of graduate students.
The opportunity to further this cause came in 2006 with the award of a substantial TEC grant to Dr Seidel and his team.
From that point the work of INNOVATIONZ has grown.
