SUPPORTING INNOVATION: THE ROAD TO CREATIVE EXCELLENCE IN UNIVERSITIES - PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

The capability to innovate is one of the necessary presuppositions of long-term organizational competitiveness and performance. Although the volume of articles and books focusing on innovation management is growing, certain aspects of this problematic seem to be neglected. Firstly, literature focused on innovation management concentrates mainly on business organizations and is not giving details or recommendations on how to innovate in academic environment. Secondly, despite a decent number of articles on innovation management in scientific journals, information about the procedures and tools concerning the creation and support of innovation within organizations lacks details. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to describe in detail the activities, procedures and tools used for the creation and support of innovation at one of the most outstanding departments of the Faculty of Economics and Administration of Masaryk University in this respect - the Department of Economics. This article is framed as a descriptive single case study that is based on internal and external documents, several semi-structured interviews and observations conducted by us, who have been in the role of faculty members, and instructed students. The presented study is the first phase of a future research project that focuses on the ways of creating and supporting innovation in public universities. Besides the detailed description of the whole process of the creation and support of innovation, this paper also discusses some factors that have been influencing the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of the creation and management of innovation in the studied academic environment. Based on our findings, we consequently formulate first recommendations to improve the creation and support of innovation in academia.