Abstract:

A continuous interaction, in which breaking borders between different fields of knowledge and organizations is encouraged, and which encompasses all the actors involved, is a prerequisite for success. This is the challenge that innovation pedagogy, a learning approach that defines in a new way how knowledge is assimilated, produced in a manner that can create innovations, aims to tackle.

The aim of innovation pedagogy is to generate environments in which knowledge-inspired competitive advantage can be created by combining different kinds of knowledge. When utilised, this edge provides opportunities of success for the whole society. Innovation competences sharpened by innovation pedagogy are the key in introducing new competitive advantages via knowledge. It is often made a distinction between academic scientific knowledge and the knowledge originating in situations in which there is a need to solve practical and application problems. The concepts of expert knowledge, know-how, tacit knowledge and intuition are important in contexts relating to the latter type. In general, maintaining professionalism requires making tacit knowledge explicit and developing it further in a triadic interaction process between university students, lecturers and the working life, i.e. businesses and other organisations.

In all areas of knowledge creation, the demand for a broader perspective is increasing. The modern world faces issues and challenges, which are becoming more and more difficult to address within the framework of a single method, be that a discipline or a profession. Knowledge in claimed to be at the heart of innovation and that innovation typically emerges at the boundaries of different knowledge domains. A boundary crossing approach for instance in problem solving, service or product creation, research or organizational team work enhances creativity, and new previously unthinkable innovations are more likely to occur. In innovation pedagogy the social aspects of working and learning are emphasized and group processes where learning happens in multidisciplinary teams form an essential part of the whole process of learning. In a multidisciplinary environment, it is possible to evoke innovations and increase entrepreneurship through research and development.

In this paper we discuss the concept of knowledge in innovation pedagogy, which was developed in Turku University of Applied Sciences, and its objective to provide the students with innovation competences in order enable them to participate in the innovation processes in their future working places and develop them. The emphasis of this paper is put on the concept and the elements of knowledge in innovation pedagogy, starting from the theoretical foundations the concept is based on. We believe that innovative solutions are created through social learning in diverse surroundings and discuss the nature of boundary crossing in higher education and its ability to provide the different types of knowledge needed in innovation creation. We also introduce a new concept of ‘noisy knowledge’, in addition to tacit knowledge, to describe the contribution of social learning environment and boundary crossing in knowledge creation. The findings and the value of this paper extends the concept of knowledge in learning context to support the development of innovation competences.

Keywords:

Innovation pedagogy, knowledge, knowledge creation, boundary crossing, noisy knowledge.