Project Team

Paul O’Reilly 

Paul is the overall GROWTHhub project lead as well as the GROWTHhub lead at TU Dublin.  He has held a number of leadership roles at TU Dublin, including Head of School of Management and College of Business Head of Research. He has a track record leading the design and delivery of innovation management programmes including with industry.

Dr Margaret Tynan

Margaret is the GROWTHhub lead at SETU.  She has over twenty years’ experience advising, mentoring and guiding entrepreneurial students while also working with more established firms. In addition to designing and delivering a range of enterprise and entrepreneurship education programmes Margaret is actively involved in delivering enterprise supports at SETU.

Provide a short description of the project

GROWTHhub is a Higher Education Authority Human Capital Initiative Pillar 3 collaborative project involving Technological University Dublin and South East Technological University (Waterford campus).

 

The GROWTHhub project mission is to encourage a growth and entrepreneurial mindset among our students and enterprise-based learners.  Core beliefs supporting this mission are: (i) entrepreneurship is an opportunity and growth-based mindset; (ii) innovation as a constituent of entrepreneurship is central to value creation, delivery and capture at the level of the organisation and the nation; and (iii) diversity of thought is a positive educational and societal objective.

 

In the context of these beliefs, GROWTHhub defines entrepreneurship as a transversal competence, which applies to all spheres of the lives of our community of learners: from nurturing personal development, to actively participating in society, to innovating as an employee, and also to starting up ventures (cultural, social or commercial). This broad definition of entrepreneurship hinges on the creation of cultural, environmental, social or economic value, and thus embraces different types of entrepreneurship.

 

GROWTHhub activities students and enterprise-based learners participating in pathways that will initially create enterprise awareness, continuously develop their entrepreneurial mindset (including ambition, motivation, personal confidence, resilience, and tolerance of uncertainty/risk) and entrepreneurial capabilities (including creativity, opportunity recognition, decision-making by critical analysis, interpersonal skills, and implementation of ideas by leadership), and culminate in a set of entrepreneurial effectiveness attributes (including independent self-direction, appreciate and create multiple forms of value, and implement enterprising ideas).

Pictured: Students participating in a ‘Bootcamp’ at SETU 

GROWTHhub at TU Dublin is building on the existing institutional entrepreneurial systems in the following ways:

 

• Providing all students – from apprenticeship to PhD – with access to experiential entrepreneurship education co-curriculum initiatives, including accredited entrepreneurship programmes, internships, accelerators, and one-to-one supports.
• Supporting the development of new and innovative entrepreneurship education pedagogical approaches and activities through cross-University faculty bursaries and faculty training programmes.
• Developing initiatives to build growth mindsets in enterprise, both at the level of employees and leaders.
• Creating opportunities for students to engage with successful entrepreneurs and innovation leaders who serve as role models and provide one-to-one student advice and mentoring.
• Establishing high quality learning spaces and resources including active learning and ideation spaces, content creation resources, and makerspace supports.

Highlight interesting collaborations / partnerships

At TU Dublin GROWTHhub has developed an Entrepreneurial Leadership programme for Director level staff in Workday.

 

GROWTHhub has taken on the national lead role for ClimateLaunchpad.  This is involves partnering with the international ClimateLaunchpad programme supported by the EC Climate-KIC to supports the development of new business ideas that address climate action challenges.

 

GROWTHhub is collaborating with the Dublin Simon Community to engage alumni in innovation hackathons to address important Dublin Simon Community challenges.

 

The GROWTHhub collaborated with IADT / ICSB to co-host the Entrepreneurship Education Symposium in 2022.  The event was very successful with excellent feedback from the 55 entrepreneurship educators who attended from HEIs across Ireland.  The ECSB has committed to collaborating for this event for 2023 and 2024.

Pictured: Guest Speaker, Mailo Power (Irish Artist), visits GROWTHhub SETU

Provide a brief summary of the project’s key enterprise engagements

Enterprise engagement at TU Dublin and SETU is also supported by bringing on campus a diverse range of entrepreneurs to share their learning with students.  This includes roll out of an Entrepreneurial Ambassador programme that links successful entrepreneurs and innovation leaders with academic schools and their students.  This also includes bringing entrepreneurs and industry experts into initiatives as judges and evaluators (e.g. TU Dublin President’s Sustainability Challenge) and as guest speakers on a range of programmes.  GROWTHhub is also working with enterprise to develop live challenge activities for students.

 

GROWTHhub partners with enterprise to design student initiatives and is also working with enterprise to develop programmes for enterprise-based learners.  For example, GROWTHhub partnered with Workday and IDA Ireland to develop an innovative Certificate in Entrepreneurial Leadership for Director level leaders in Dublin.  The design of the programme involved extensive co-design and engagement with leadership across the global Workday leadership.

Pictured: Guest Speaker from Publicis at SETU

Project Showcase

Website links:

www.tudublin.ie/growthhub

www.growthhub.setu.ie

Pictured: Alannah Pardy (GROWTHhub / SETU student), 2022 Grant Thornton High Achiever Winner – Recapture One, Student Entrepreneur Awards

 

Last updated: November 2024