Best Practices - NURTURING CREATIVITY & INNOVATION
Stavropol State Agrarian University
ORGANISATION PROFILE
- Country: Russia
- Number of employees: 1429
- Turnover: €14M
- Sector: Higher education
- Track record in Awards: 2005 - Russian National Quality Award / 2008 - EFQM Excellence Award, Finalist
APPLICANT OVERVIEW
Stavropol State Agrarian University (SSAU) is a federal state educational institution of higher professional education situated in the Southern Federal District of the Russian Federation in the town of Stavropol. The founder of the University is the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation.
SSAU is a multi-branch educational, scientific- innovative and socio- cultural centre: there are 11 faculties, 90 innovative structural divisions, a public catering complex, scientific – production centre, sport and health improving complex. The training is undertaken through 55 programmes of higher professional education. Over 13,500 students study at the University. There are 1,429 staff in the University and of these, 649 are teaching staff.
ROLE MODEL AREA – NURTURING CREATIVITY & INNOVATION
Approach
SSAU uses an integrated business model with a clear rationale, strong focus on stakeholder needs, and refinements being embedded over time. It consists of an “innovation engine”, an element for scientific/innovative value definition at its core, with respective results a) being used to continuously improve educational value creation processes, and b) being economised (with partners and/or forward integration) directly (e.g. start-up companies ex business incubator) or indirectly (e.g. fees from licensing/selling intellectual property). This concept is recognised, understood and appreciated by all stakeholders of SSAU.
Consistent with the approaches to Leading with Vision, Inspiration & Integrity and Succeeding with People, SSAU is constantly looking to improve, and to innovate. Learning, creativity and innovation comes from all parts of SSAU, and ideas are generated on a regular basis.
SSAU uses state of the art approaches to innovation complex management and international complex management. The scientific/innovative portfolio is defined annually as part of the business planning process and is reviewed on a regular basis.
With the Business Incubators initiative, SSAU proves its ability to create new services to increase value for stakeholders, in particular for enterprises and society at large.
One of the strengths of SSAU is, in addition to the integrated and well-tuned business model, the degree of integration between all their approaches. The linkage between required functional skills and behaviours, competencies, training, review of objectives, strategic key outcomes and performance indicators, and recognition of people, is highly visible.
SSAU’s overall approach to a customer, and creation of economic and social value oriented innovation management is a significant strength.
Deployment
SSAU customers and partners, e.g. students, teachers, staff, enterprises, and other stakeholders are involved in the development of new and innovative products, services and experiences for both existing and new customer groups. SSAU achievements in national and international contests and its successes in receiving grants and funding support this statement.
Nurturing creativity & innovation is deployed through three principal mechanisms which are all-embracing and complimentary.
The first of these mechanisms is defining value at the core of the business model, at the many scientific/innovative labs, by solving practical problems of enterprises, or by fulfilling orders of Ministries.
The second deployment mechanism is the use of the scientific/innovative value to define and/or improve content of educational value creation process.
The third mechanism is the economisation of the scientific/innovative value, by start-up companies or from licensing/selling intellectual property.
Assessment and Refinement
SSAU’s management system, including at corporate level more than 100 key outcomes and performance indicators, allows for a systematic assessment and refinement. SSAU has implemented a strong structured approach to involve all core processes, in particular scientific/innovative core processes, innovative labs, faculties and departments in reviewing the segmented results and developing subsequent action plans to further improve its scientific/innovative potential.
Impact on performance
The success of SSAU in realising better than expected outcomes is as a result of this highly individualised and focused approach to creativity & innovation. This is one of the key factors that distinguishes SSAU from other universities. The approach and deployment reflects very favourably in the key strategic outcomes and performance indicators.
As a result of these role model actions SSAU has been rated since 2005 as the "leading" agrarian university for the whole Russian federation.
