International Innovation Camps: Evidence from a Field Study

A two-week workshop was held in Finland during February 2010 and again in Glasgow in February 2011. The events were sponsored by the European Lifelong Learning programme. Students from Portugal, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Finland and the UK were placed in multicultural teams of five. Each team had two product designers, one graphic designer, one financial and one marketing student. They were set the task of devising new product ideas for a local company and they had two weeks in which to do it. These intensive workshops comprised lectures and practice sessions as well as ideation sessions for the new product ideas. This paper reports on the reactions to the first programme and the lessons learned.