Training Engineers for Innovation

10 How Do Graduate Engineering Schools Train for Innovation? Study of the Curricula of Three French Schools

10.1. Introduction

As the first chapters of this book show, conceptions of innovation vary according to socioeconomic contexts, professional activities and epistemological approaches of the disciplines that account for the phenomenon. What about the training itself, when it actually comes to training engineers? It seems that different conceptions of innovation also affect educational practices. The incentive to innovate, which has been present in our societies for a few decades, in fact receives a mixed response and is interpreted differently by higher education institutions training engineers. It reinterprets representations of the role of engineers in relation to progress and its place and role in society since the Renaissance, Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution (see Chapter 1).

How do engineering schools adapt the incentive to innovate and how do they combine it with their educational principles? What does it mean, from a practical point of view, to want to train for innovation? What are the methods used and the preferred curricular orientations? What are the links between educational innovation and innovation training for engineers?

This chapter attempts to answer these questions in a practical way based on the survey carried out within the Innov’ing 2020 research project: Innov’ing 2020: Les ingénieurs et l’innovation: nouveaux métiers, nouvelles formations. ...