Ireland's new Innovation Academy: academic‐practitioner partnerships in action

Purpose – In November 2010 Ireland launched a new multi‐institutional academic initiative called The Innovation Academy to provide credited teaching programmes in innovation and entrepreneurial thinking to be taken in parallel with university doctoral programmes of any discipline. This article aims to examine the design and development of this new initiative, how it integrates external organizations into its teaching programmes and how this practically translates into employment and job creation.Design/methodology/approach – The authors approached this paper using a standard qualitative data gathering approach, analyzing student reflection documents and enterprise partner feedback as well as quantitative data on participation from both academic and enterprise sources.Findings – It was found that working with enterprises as part of the Innovation Academy Graduate Certificate in innovation and entrepreneurship has a significant impact on both the student and the enterprise partner. Students describe an incr...