Increasing Customer Innovation in SMEs with DigitalizationIci in SMEs. E-book. Formato EPUB Baltic Sea Academy Baltic Sea Academy   -  Books On Demand, 2023  - 

While larger corporations often lead in the realm of innovation, many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) lag behind, especially in Eastern Europe. Their limited internal resources often become a bottleneck, making it challenging to address vital customer innovation. At its core, successful innovation management revolves around understanding and addressing genuine customer needs, fostering innovative business ideas and concepts.For many SMEs, the challenge lies not just in obtaining customer feedback, but also in effectively processing this feedback into actionable insights. The path to truly customer-centric innovation is intricate, necessitating transformations at every organizational level. Yet, with the dawn of digitalization and new media, a myriad of opportunities has emerged. These technologies empower SMEs to harness customer-centric innovations, bolstering their innovative prowess and market competitiveness. Surprisingly, the majority of SMEs remain unaware or underr-equipped to leverage these digital tools and methods.Against this background, the international Erasmu+ project 'Digital methods, toolbox and trainings for increasing customer innovation in SMEs' (ICIinSMEs) was implemented from 2020 - 2023, to enable and support SMEs to exploit their customer innovation potential and thus to strengthen the productivity and competitiveness of SMEs, to secure existing jobs and to create new ones. The book compiles the main results and experiences from Denmark, Germany, Hungary and Poland.

Work-based learning around the mare balticum. E-book. Formato EPUB Baltic Sea Academy   -  Books On Demand, 2015  - 

At the 10th Hanseatic Conference 2015 in Hamburg, representatives from business organisations, academic institutions and policy makers from all countries around the Baltic Sea exchanged their experiences. This book contains the presented papers and a summary of the participants’ discussion.Vocational training has dramatically lost its appeal. More and more young people rather opt for study programmes at the university, and refuse to learn practical skills in vocational education. However, the qualifications of the high number of academics do not match the demand of SMEs for skilled workers and entrepreneurs, as their knowledge is mostly theoretical. At the same, due to demographic changes, the number of school leavers in the Baltic Sea Region is declining. Both developments have led to a dramatic shortage of skilled workers and entrepreneurs which is severely limiting growth and innovativeness of SMEs.In order to overcome this crisis, dual vocational training and dual degree study programmes have to be promoted substantially. In dual vocational training enterprises can actively influence and improve the quality of the education their apprentices receive; and in dual degree study programmes students can test and apply their theoretical knowledge, which they acquire at the university, simultaneously in the enterprises.The contributors of this book describe how this reform of education policy can be implemented in practice.