Changone Kim, Daewook Bang

Keimyung University, Korea

The effect of the involvement

of industry in the class for

solving problems

South Korea (ROK) at a Glance

Area: 99.6 K Sq. Km (107th)

Population: 49.0 Million (26th)

GNI: US$ 13,160 Billion (FY’13)

(GNI per capita : US$26,205)

Economy and ICT (World rank)

- OECD member in 1996

- Economy (12th)

- Broadband diffusion (2nd)

- Home PC diffusion (3rd)

Psy Gangnam style17th July, 2012Over 2 billion views

Son HeungminBayer Leverkusen17 goals in 2014-2015

Transforming Universities into Regional Hub

for Industry-University Cooperation• The Industry-Academic Cooperation Act of the Ministry of

Education has achieved legal basis for universities to acquire

proprietorship of the patent rights on research outputs.

• The Industry-Academic Cooperation Act of the Ministry of Education

sets forth detailed provisions for Industry-University Cooperation

Foundation, Technology Transfer Office, and Technology Holding

Company that established a stable and sustainable growth system.

Major achievement through UIC

Introduction / Background• Universities are regarded as organizations that educate large proportions of

the population and create and share new knowledge for the regional

business ecosystem.

• Although universities provide much broad benefits to the firms in

regional business ecosystem in terms of accessing more profound research,

getting university faculties' expertise, and receiving general support with

problem solving, most prior researches are focused on the R&D

collaborations.

• Even though the positive effects of university-industry collaboration have

been reported, there are little cases about the involvement of the

undergraduate students as key stakeholders in the problem solving of the

firms.

• In this paper, we consider the effect of involving students in solving

industrial problems in the class by the students.

Method• Keimyung University in Korea has a consulting program designed for

SMEs called as Business Clinic Program (BCP) which invites CEOs

with problems every month, problem-owner presents his/her

problems to the consultants from various fields who listen to the

problems and define problems through Q&A and generate ideas by

proposing suggestions based on their experiences and knowledge in

the business and academia.

• Although CEO with problem has the chance to get the ideas for the

solution in BCP, he/she has another problem to define and realize

the idea in the firm. So we tried to participate the students in the

realization of the suggested ideas for the firm in the class

(Technology Management) during 2nd semester in 2014(Fig. 1 and Fig.

2). Three firms proposed five problems for the class (Table 1).

Fig. 1. The concept model of the linkage between Business Consulting Program

and Problem-led Class

CEOs with problems

(Problem Owner)

(Consultant group)

Professors, CEOs, and Professionals from

public institutions such as banks and regional

government

Design

Issues

Marketing

Issues

Sales

Issues

Management

Issues

(Facilitator)

Business Consulting Program

Based on Collective Intelligence

Define Problems

Propose Solutions

Proposed

ideas for

solution

Students groups

in a Problem-Led Class

Present the detailed solutions to CEOs(Problem owner)

Table 1. Problems proposed to the student-groups by firms

Company Main

Products

Problems proposed to student-groups BCP

Sinwoo

P&C

Diapers for

adults

Social marketing ideas and strategies

of adult diapers

Problem owner

in 1st BCP

Viral marketing ideas and strategies

of adult diapers

Ace

innotech

Window

parts

Marketing for newly developed

remote window control system

Consultant in

BCP

ES

people

Software Development of new business items

New UI design concept of groupware

Problem owner

in 3rd BCP

Method• The students in the class learn the theory from the text book and

participate in solving the real problem as one team which include

special lectures by CEOs and visiting the firms. Finally, they

present the solution to the CEOs invited, problem-owners in final

class in that semester(Fig 2.)

Fig. 2. Business Consulting Program and final presentation in

Problem-led class

Business Consulting

Program with proposed

solutions

Invited lectures of CEOs

and visiting to the firms

Team Activities for solving

problems

Presentation of solutions

by student groups to CEOs

in the end of semester

‘14.10.9 ‘14.10.31 ’14.11.7 ’14.11.12

‘14.11.14 ‘14.11.19 ‘14.11.21 ’14.11.26

’14.11.28 ‘14.12.4 ‘14.12.5

‘14.12.18

NO. Name Signature

1 남동우 남동우

2 박창권 박창권

3 변석현 변석현

4 서아라 서아라

5 이영준 이영준

6 이학준 이학준

7 최동한 최동한

Sinwoo P&C

Name 김종호

Signature

Name Roles

서아라Arranging and Presenting

final presentation

남동우 Developing promotion ideas

이영준

변석현

Analyzing product and managing project박창권

이학준

최동한 Editing Pictures

Method• We asked CEOs whether the involvement was helpful to their firms

and surveyed the students with questionnaires which include the

progress of self-leadership, self-efficacy, and team work skills.

• This study also tries to compare the survey result with the students

in the other class with only lectures with t-test(31 vs. 38)

Type of Class Student No. Surveys gathered Class characteristics

Problem-led 34 31 From 13 departments4th-15, 3rd-12, 2nd-3, 1st-1

Lecture-led 38 1 department4th-8, 3rd-8, 2nd-20, 1st-1, ND-1

Results• We observe the differences in the progress of self-leadership, self-

efficacy, and team work skills compared with other students in the only

instructor-led class. Table 3 shows that self-leadership and team

activity skills are significantly elevated in the problem-led class

joined with firms more than instructor-led class. Especially, Team

activity skills such as ideation, communication are significantly

higher in problem-led class than in instructor-led one.

Table 3. Comparison of Self leadership, self-efficacy, and Team activity between

problem-led class for firms and instructor-led class with t test.

Items Items t

Self-leadership Constructive thought pattern 2.638*

Behavior-focused 1.670

Natural reward 2.628*

Self-efficacy 1.300

Team Activity(TA) TA_total 3.879***

TA_role awareness 2.215*

TA_idea generation 3.738***

TA_communication 3.019**

TA_satisfication 5.222***

*: p<0.05, **:p<0.01, ***: p<0.001

Discussion / Conclusion• A effective model of developing the competencies of students with helping

the small firms to solve their problems

• The firms broaden their choices for the solutions and get the chances todiscover new employee candidates

• The Students absorb more knowledge and skills themselves by solving realproblems of firms with their team members during visiting the firms,interviewing the CEO

• Although various UIC programs have been implemented in Korea, it is stillnot confident to ensure merit among universities and firms with thoseprograms. This study presents that the combination of UIC programs andthe involvement of firms in the class with their problems could beneficialto university, students, and firms.

• This study proposes a UIC-based skill development model in class whichdevelops the competencies of students more efficiently during helping thesmall firms to solve their problems by participating firms in the problem-led class than in instructor-led one.

Acknowledgement• Following are results of a study on the "Leaders INdustry-university

Cooperation" Project, supported by the Ministry of Education(MOE)

References• Gertner, D., Roberts, J, Charles, D. 2011, University-industry

collaboration: a CoPs approach to KTPs, Journal of Knowledge

Management, Vol. 15, Issue 4, pp. 625 – 647.

• Lee, Y. S., 2000, The Sustainability of University-Industry Research

Collaboration: An Empirical Assessment, Journal of Technology

Transfer, Vol. 25, pp.111-133.

• Perkmann,M., Walsh, K. 2007, University–industry relationships and

open innovation: Towards a research agenda, International Journal of

Management International, Vol.9, Issue 4, pp. 259–280.

• Tidd, J., Trewhella, M., 1997. Organisational and technological

antecedents for knowledge acquisition and learning. R&D

Management, Vol. 27, pp. 359–375.

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