Thus far, digital transformation had a strong impact on business and society. The large-scale adoption of digital technologies changed social relationships and opened up to new opportunities for higher education. Currently, the interplay between innovation and digitalization become are among the most important assets for the educational system. In this light, this chapter aims to explore how digital skills and competencies modify the issue of co-creation in higher education. The authors use the case study analysis to explore such theme. The Little Genius International case is presented and discussed: an international alternative school in English for digital natives recognized as the best benefit corporation for the world. The main contribution of the chapter is that it outlines what are the new digital skills and competencies enabling a better understanding of the concept of students' co-creation in HEIs.
TopIntroduction
Rapid and continuous technological developments, favored by Information and Communication Technology (ICT), are causing disruptive changes from both the social and economic perspectives, thus encouraging the acceleration of scientific and technological knowledge (Scuotto, Ferraris, Bresciani, Al-Mashari, & Del Giudice, 2016; Santoro, Vrontis, Thrassou, & Dezi, 2018). Digital transformation has a substantial impact on all sectors of the economy, government, and social life. Through recognizing the variability of this emerging scenario, the attention of managers and researchers is focusing on how innovation can be supported for maximizing positive results (Del Giudice and Straub, 2011; Carayannis & Meissner, 2017).
The large-scale adoption of digital technologies changes relations in social life and opens up new opportunities for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Innovation and digitalization become one of the main assets for HEIs (Etzkowitz, 2003; Harryson, Dudkowski, & Stern, 2008). Universities must focus on exploring new knowledge through digitization processes and promote new forms of its dissemination in society. Following the Triple Helix model (Etzkowitz, 2008; Carayannis & Campbell, 2010; Leydesdorff, 2012), the University has an essential role in promoting an innovative environment. University, Industry, and Government formerly operated independently but nowadays tend to work together, generating different overlaps of communication networks. These interrelations continually reformulate structures, characteristics and objectives (Etzkowitz, 2008; Magni, Pezzi, & Vrontis, 2020). The model is used as a useful mechanism to trigger and sustain development dynamics based on innovation and technical progress (Lawton Smith, & Leydesdorff, 2014). Moreover, the Triple Helix model could be studied as a relational policy tool whose adoption aims to encourage the generation of an innovative firm (product, service, process) with the active presence of scientific talents, and research (University), managerial skills, and state financial support (central and local government) (Del Giudice, Carayannis, & Maggioni, 2017).
The intense connection between higher education institutions and industry provides for strengthening and reshaping the educational approach (Ahmad, Halim, Ramayah, Popa, & Papa, 2018). In this sense, a relevant aspect of the strategy of HEIs is the rapid development of advanced technologies and interactive tools aimed at improving the processes of knowledge transfer, coordination, and active students’ involvement (Vargas-Vera, Nagy, & De Pablos, 2013; Del Giudice, Garcia-Perez, Scuotto, & Orlando, 2019; Magni et al., 2020).
Through the formation of knowledge and skills transferred to students, education takes place significantly in socio-economic and dynamic innovation development, and, at the same time, through the construction of a knowledge society (Martini & Vespasiano, 2015). The strategic relevance of these interventions confirms the importance of adopting new methodologies for the students’ development, also contributing, as said by Mota and Scott (2014), to the training of professionals’ skills and competencies for facing the challenge of innovative changes at an entrepreneurial level.
Besides, the development of dynamic innovations within the University 4.0 scenario helps the heterogeneity of knowledge to activate specific advantages on the education of new digitized educational system. Indeed, Del Giudice and Maggioni (2014) have highlighted that digitale tools are the fundamental basis for a new student-leadership approach.
University 4.0 is a new scenario that brings the concept of education into a fully automated and interconnected phase. The digitalization has a profound impact on data, computing power and connectivity (Cillo, Rialti, Bertoldi, & Ciampi, 2019). Another critical feature of University 4.0 is the management of analytics: the value of data is generated only when a University system has the ability to collect and analyze them (Ross, 2017). Nowadays, Universities use very few data (Dietz-Uhler & Hurn, 2013) and the interaction between people and technology, which involves increasingly widespread “touch” interfaces and augmented reality (Zhao, Qi, & De Pablos, 2014; Selwyn, 2012), is rarely implemented. Moreover, the University 4.0 scenario is based on the implementation of those marketing theories and models that were previously limited only to firms as a means to attracting, satisfying, and creating in-deep relationships with their students (Schlesinger, Cervera, & Iniesta, 2015). With the marketization of HEIs, Universities are permeated with marketing concepts and terms such as services, loyalty, satisfaction and co-creation (Zambon, Chatzkel, Sánchez, & Elena, 2006).