Dr. Allan John Komakech

Innovation Coach

Project Title:

Improving students’ innovativeness and entrepreneurial ability

Summary of the Problem

The Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (DABE) identified a pool of industries to which it attaches its students at the end of their second and third years for internship. Through the internship, the department is meant to have a symbiotic relationship with the industry where the industry helps the students to relate theoretical knowledge received at the university with practical work at the industry. DABE students on the other hand are supposed to come up with innovations that can help improve the productivity of the industry.

Unfortunately, the internship does not appear to be working as per its design. The industry has complained that the benefit of the internship appears to be one-sided: DABE benefits by having its students trained while the industry receives nothing tangible from the internship.

Description of the Innovation

The innovation begins with the identification of key challenges facing the current DABE internship program. This is being done mainly through conducting interviews with the different stakeholders. The project design team is developing a platform through which these key challenges can be addressed to create an innovative internship program that increases the number of industrial innovations for uptake by the industry, graduate employment and work placement.