The Technology Transfer and Innovation unit at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) in collaboration with innobiz DUT Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, recently welcomed Finland’s JAMK University of Applied Sciences for an engaging Entrepreneurship and Design Thinking Workshop with DUT staff members. This session was held at Coastlands Hotel, Musgrave on Friday, 24 January 2024.

Lecturer Mari Hakkarainen from JAMK Future Factory and Juha Hautanen, Head of Department (HOD) at the School of Professional Teacher Education, led the entire workshop with the goal of encouraging an entrepreneurial mindset among staff members. They divided the participants into groups, assigned tasks, and oversaw presentations that were all centred around entrepreneurship.
Programme director, Dr Farai Dziike who is a TTI specialist at DUT briefly explained the importance of staff needing to embody entrepreneurial mindsets in their own roles and then pass that mindset on to students. He then formally introduced facilitators from Finland. “The main reason we called for this workshop is that you guys as staff members need to be entrepreneurs and extend that to your students whom you teach every day,” he said.
The Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment’s Professor Rendani Wilson Maladzhi formally welcomed everyone in attendance and thanked JAMK University officials for being the forerunners of this project. The process of incorporating entrepreneurship into the curriculum was thoroughly explored by Maladzhi, who is also the coordinator for this integration at DUT.

“At DUT, we have tried several times to integrate entrepreneurship to our curriculum, but faced some challenges. So now we are given another mandate to try again and we believe that this time we are not going to fail. Few years ago, there have been some strives. Some of our colleagues have been to different places like Finland and Ireland, trying to benchmark so that what we bring to DUT will be stand as a testimony of our hard work,” he explained.

Staff members were given an introduction of The Fuel for Creativity Workshop which incorporated phases of the Design Thinking process inspired by methodologies from the Stanford Design School with practical adaptations. Some of the key discussions were:

• Integrated entrepreneurship module (as a part of degree programme)
• Identify entrepreneurial opportunities to solve surrounding society problems
• Entrepreneurship programme

Pictured: Mr Juha Hautanen of JAMK University of Applied Sciences facilitating the DUT Staff Workshop.

Photographer: Khulasande Tshayile.

Thubelihle Dumakude