EXPERIENCES RELATED TO CREATIVE THINKING-ORIENTED WORKSHOPS AT THE UNIVERSITY TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OFFICES

Abstract

The number of the courses and workshops in the best universities has increased since 2010, which have been officially supported by the private companies. Since then, the technology transfer offices have become more active to support creativity and innovation as their main innovation activity by giving initiatives of opening new creative thinking-oriented workshops. This study aims to analyze how the role of the creative thinking-oriented workshops, like design thinking training have affected the development of the to develop an innovative technology based products and services in the changing environment of the technology transfer office in Turkey. As a result, most (98%) agreed that the creative thinking-oriented trainings were strongly needed to promote and empower the creativity in the university environment. As most (83%) of the participants pointed out that creative thinking-oriented courses were not well developed in Turkey. More importantly, they had limited implications in the development of the innovative products. They strongly persuaded that awareness should have been increased in the training of the creativity at the universities where the technology transfer offices were the changing agents.