Abstract:

Since 2007, a series of Innovation Camps have been organized to enable students from diverse engineering disciplines and cultural backgrounds to work in teams developing innovative concepts and products from an industrial perspective. These summer schools, titled "Conceptual Design and Development of Innovative Products" (CD-DIP), have been delivered outside academia in close collaboration with international universities and companies such as Bang & Olufsen. Their high impact was documented in [1].

This paper examines the impact of more recent Innovation Camps (2014–2019) on professional, interpersonal, and personal skills gained through participation. Observations during the camps revealed that students' happiness and sense of equity varied, influenced by familiarity with the design process, disciplinary roles, and non-technical skills development. Perceived equity often affected (un)happiness, leading to behaviours such as absenteeism, conflicts, team struggles, illness, sadness, or uncertainty.

To explore impact of more recent Innovation Camps (2014–2019), a survey was conducted among participants from 2015 to 2019. The survey is a rephrased version of the 2007–2013 survey ([1]), with added questions on happiness and equity. The survey was launched end of 2025, early 2026. Data collection for the survey is partly collected and partly still underway.

We confirm previous findings from Larsen et al. [1] that non-technical skills gained from the camps have been highly valuable in participants' subsequent professional lives. In addition, we identified several imbalances and challenges in the students’ experiences in these cross-culturally and disciplinary diverse Innovation Camps. Understanding these experiences is essential for removing unwanted inequity and providing guidance that further enhances non-technical skills and optimizes learning in cross-cultural, multidisciplinary engineering settings.

Keywords:

Happiness, equity, non-technical skills, multidisciplinary teams, engineering education, innovation camp.