As part of the Durban University of Technology’s continuous efforts and steadfast commitment to fostering and maintaining collaborations with international partners, and learning from international best practices the innobiz DUT Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation recently played host to their Finnish counterparts, the JAMK University of Applied Sciences.  

The visit was centered around the exchange of ideas and the two institutions sharing the best practices in the entrepreneurship space, with the international visitors sharing the methods they used to ensure the development and advancement of entrepreneurship in their country and continent.  

Ms. Nontokozo Ngcobo, innobiz Centre Manager, welcomed the travelling party and explained that the visit from the Finnish delegation made up of JAMK senior lecturers, Johanna Lehosmaa and Mari Hakkarainen, signaled the University’s firm stance on the development of the student entrepreneurs. 

“One of the main reasons the University invites the best practice is to ensure that we align with the entrepreneurship development best practices in the world. When we were establishing innobiz our Vice-Chancellor (Professor Thanda Mthembu) invited the same university (JAMK) to also assist,” Ms. Ngcobo explained.  

She further added that such programmes, of exchanging ideas and best practices, were critical as they were used for developing and shaping the entrepreneurial mindsets of the student entrepreneurs as the programmes were thoroughly researched. 

“We also benchmark with our global universities so that we are aligned and ensure that our practices are the best as well, that is why when you travel abroad you find that we are aligned in terms of activities, we are confident because of the standards and the approach that we are using,” Ms. Ngcobo told the gathered audience.  

Delving into the work they do at their institution Johanna Lehosmaa, a senior lecturer at the JAMK University of Applied Sciences, explained that there were several similarities in what the innobiz Centre and their start-up Future Factory at JAMK, lauding the atmosphere and innovative environment offered by innobiz to its student entrepreneurs.   

“It is something that is like innobiz, but there are lots of things that we can learn from and we hope that there are somethings that you can also learn from us,” Lehosmma explained.  

At JAMK Future Factory, Lehosmaa and Hakkarainen explained, the entrepreneurship studies are compulsory regardless of the degree that the students were pursuing with the idea being to produce all-round students with future work skills, an entrepreneurial mindset, career paths, and professional networks. 

The JAMK University of Applied Sciences has in the region of 9500 students with 900 staff members, comparatively smaller than DUT, and their journey to becoming entrepreneurial began more than 10 years when the management decided that it was vital for all its students to boast an entrepreneurial mindset, design thinking and project management skills.  

“Our responsibility is to coordinate all of that. Our students work in multi-disciplinary teams on how to design their own business ideas although they don’t implement them in our basic studies but they learn how to plan them,” Lehosmaa said.  

She added that in their innovation studies their students dealt with real work life problems, instead of imagined problems, through collaborations with local businesses, companies and municipalities who give these real-life problems for students in the Future Factory to solve.  

“When the student comes to the course, they are able to solve these problems in a multi-disciplinary team and in the end the students present their results to their assigner, meaning that they’re learning real working life skills,” Lehosmaa elaborated.  

Hakkarainen further shed light on their methods of imparting entrepreneurial skills to their students, adding that in their innovation studies they ensure that the students reflect on everything that they are taught. 

“This makes them think for some time on what they have learnt on the aims of each course which gives us a lot of data on how the students feel and the course can be developed further,” Lehosmaa explained.  

Hakkarainen highlighted that they placed a lot of emphasis on practical work, with lots of instructions, in their courses instead of just lecturing thus enabling the students to learn by doing while they also do not have exams but have continuous evaluation as part of their approach to “learn by doing”.  

Earlier this year, a delegation of four staff members from the Departments of Somatology, Biotechnology and Food Science, Ecotourism and the School of Education at DUT also visited the JAMK University of Applied Sciences for two weeks. 

Dr. Nonhlanhla Mthiyane, Head of the DUT School of Education was part of the delegation and explained that one of the reasons for their visit was to learn during JAMK’s InnoFlash Week course.  

“One of the things that JAMK has done successfully was to integrate their entrepreneurship education programme into their studies, making it compulsory for all the students to go through a three-course entrepreneurship education programme,” Dr. Mthiyane said.  

Dr. Mthiyane further explained that although the students were not all going to be entrepreneurs, the idea was that, similar to DUT’s ENVISION2030 clarion call, they produce adaptive graduates through their design thinking, real work life based programmes help inculcate such attributes.