Université orientée projet: construction de la capacité d'innovation
Project-Oriented University - Building the Capability for Innovation

Summary/Abstract: Global economy is increasingly a knowledge economy, making people’s skills and qualifications more important than traditional power indicators such as territory, geography, natural resources. Globalization imposes new rhythms of performance to every economic or social field. Higher education is no exception to this, since it lies at the interface with the external environment, where skills and qualifications will be used and exploited for economic benefits. Universities are under a two-fold pressure. First, they provide services, knowledge, skills for fast-moving sectors. The knowledge and skills may quickly become obsolete and irrelevant for the economy. Second, universities need to innovate and to adapt to situations of constant change. Both types of pressure force universities to develop their capability for innovation, which becomes a prerequisite for survival. The purpose of this paper is to explain the concept of projectoriented university as a type of university that explicitly uses projects to perform processes of medium to high complexity, thus allowing it to deal with the increasing turbulence and dynamics of its environments. This concept is premised on the idea that there is a connection between a university’s maturity in project management and its managerial competitiveness and innovativeness. The concept inherits the conceptual core of the model of the projectoriented company and it comprises two components. The former is concerned with the structural dimensions of project management, “the hard” component – processes, procedures, organizational structures, terminology. The latter is concerned with the social dimension of project management, the “soft” component – skills, attitudes, competences, project management culture. Empirical results are considered representative for the Romanian higher education system as a whole, with due nuances and exceptions.

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