Just an Aluminium Trolley – A Case within the Frame of Problem-basedLearning: Linking Strategy, Innovation, Product Development and Design in aDynamic Concept between the Academic and Professional World

摘要

This paper presents what an engineering school at a university may do to stimulaternengineering excellence. Problem-based education methods in connection with project and grouporganisedrnstudies as a link between the academic and professional world is presented in the frame ofrnMechanical Engineering and Industrial Design curriculums. Innovation as suggested is the creationrnof a new product-market-technology-organisation-combination (PMTO-combination) consisting ofrnthree key elements: 1) Innovation is a process and should be managed as such, 2) the result is atrnleast one new element in the company’s PMTO-combinations. 3) The extent to which therninnovation is new may range from incremental, small step innovation, through synthetic innovation,rnI.e. the creative recombination of existing techniques, ideas or methods, to discontinuous, radical,rnquantum-leap innovation. Often new means: new, somewhere on the continuum. The company inrnthis case - a very small business - wanted just an aluminium trolley.