iDEA Lab: Empowering university – industry collaboration through students' entrepreneurship and open innovation (original) (raw)

Considering that companies, especially SMEs, have limited resources to support their product development processes, their management has started to look for fresh ideas and competent individuals outside their borders. Co-creation is seen as a powerful engine for innovation. This paper focuses on the establishment of university-industry cooperation, by engaging Serbian students and researchers in product development processes of a company from Germany. This company has introduced four problems, two of them solved by chosen expert teams and another two by interested students. The paper shows potential and high level of performance identified in this case, by engaging a large number of students and experts outside the company through an innovation contest in comparison with the internal product development.