Adult Learning, Adult Skills and Innovation

Abstract

Adult Learning, Adult Skills and Innovation Richard Desjardins, Thomas Lans & Peer Ederer This is the accepted version of the following article: Desjardins, R., Lans, T., & Ederer, P. (guest editors) (2016). Adult Learning, Adult Skills and Innovation, European Journal of Education, Volume 51, Number 2. pp. 141-294. DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12175. A broader link between adult education and innovation has been highlighted by a number of scholars and analysts in recent years. Overall, a strong correlation can be observed at the country level between adult education activity as measured in the EU Adult Education Survey and innovation performance (CEDEFOP, 2012). Tellingly, this correlation is found to be stronger than that between the proportion of higher education graduates and innovation performance. One interpretation of these data is that tertiary education itself is not sufficient for innovation. That is, higher learning may need to be complemented with adult education, including training and workplace learning, in order for it to make a significant contribution to innovation. Moreover, innovation is not just something that highly-educated people do or something that happens only as consequence of specialised researchers working in R&D departments. It involves workers across the skill spectrum. The idea that continuous learning is part and parcel of innovation processes is intuitive. Yet, many policy makers, scholars, and practitioners, such as human resource managers fail to grasp the need to develop and nurture broad-based adult learning systems at the country, regional or organisational level. Is adult learning in all its forms strategically fostered to enable innovation? Can it be or should it be? It is easy to see that these questions have important implications for the EU agenda on innovation. Not least, innovation and entrepreneurship are considered to be key for the creation, development, growth and long- term survival of firms. European statistics are indicative here, as they show that 72% of the European companies have introduced at least one innovation in their company over the period 2012-2105. These innovations consist in a wide range of domains, new or significantly improved services (45%), goods (42%), organisational methods (38%), processes (32%) or marketing strategies (32%) (Innobarometer, 2015). The topic of innovation and entrepreneurship is important because it is directly relevant for outcomes, such as a start-up or the introduction of a new product, process, practice or service. But scholars increasingly acknowledge that innovation is not just about outcomes, it involves processes of learning and communication. Yet, in practice, it continues to often be approached from a narrow perspective. Take, for instance, well-documented proxies for innovation, such as R&D investment and patent data. The notion behind these proxies is that innovation is a result of a linear process in which universities, research institutes and R&D departments are the core players. Knowledge is created by the research institutes and subsequently finds its way into new products and processes – the so-called Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) mode of innovation (Jensen et al., 2007). Based on this view of innovation, one might conclude that the European food industry is not very innovative compared to other European manufacturing industries. However, this perspective neglects the fact that many innovative firms do not perform R&D and that a large proportion of innovations are not patented. The practice of patenting varies widely according to sector, but this does not mean that innovation does not occur in sectors with fewer patents. To illustrate the dynamics involved, recent research highlights the importance of interactions with suppliers, customers, stakeholders and other forms of multi-stakeholder processes and feedback from the market as key modes of innovation (Arundel et al., 2007).