A freshly-created hub to support and motivate students to become successful job creators and entrepreneurs has been launched at the University of Cape Coast, UCC.
Design Thinking and Innovation Hub, abbreviated as D-Hub, an initiative under the Office of the Vice Chancellor, seeks to develop change agents in its community, stimulate the establishment and growth of start-up firms and other businesses.
The initiative is also aimed at helping to solve societal problems through design thinking, technology transfer, diffusion of innovation and continuous improvement.
Speaking at the launch, Chancellor of the University, Sir (Dr.) Sam Esson Jonah, indicated that the establishment of the D-Hub would deepen academia and industry collaboration to groom students into skilled business men and women “with the right focus and business ethics to make them succeed in their endeavors.”
He said Ghana stood to benefit immensely when students were prepared with the right attitude to work and an entrepreneurial mindset, stressing the aforesaid would enable them excel in their various fields of endeavour.
The Chancellor, who was the keynoter at the launch, lauded the determination of University Management and faculty to think outside the box to introduce initiatives that would not allow graduates join the bandwagon of job seekers.
He emphasized that the design thinking attitude was the cornerstone to train students who were being prepared for jobs that had not been yet created.
Presently, he noted, universities all over the world were working assiduously to produce useful global citizens to practically inculcate the 21st century skills into them. He was however quick to add that ‘most of these students and institutions were helping young students to put their design thinking tools into practice in the real world by making them spend time with business owners and project managers to help optimise their services to clients’
The Chancellor underlined that the D-Hub could be a conduit through which creative and enthusiastic students from the senior high level, UCC, as well as lecturers who had come out with research findings of industrial value, could be incubated and groomed to develop business principles that could solve problems in all sectors of the economy.
He encouraged young entrepreneurs not to give up when they encountered difficulties or failures in their careers. He indicated that failure was part of the journey to a successful career. He added that the D-Hub would unearth and discover talents in multidisciplinary spheres on the University campus.
Sir (Dr) Sam Jonah announced that D-Hub had five steps, namely ‘empathy, defining the problem, ideating solutions, prototyping a solution and testing a solution’. These, he observed, would ‘serve as avenue for many new ideas to be born in the midst of competition of students, staff and community’.
He opined that technological innovations churned out from the Hub would increase accessibility and national development along with government flagship programmes.
The Chancellor envisaged a collaboration between the Hub, business community and government in the areas of technological development where incubates could develop new technological innovations to augment scientific discoveries.
He urged management to sustain the D-Hub to become a model worthy of emulation across other public and private campuses within and outside Ghana.
Chairing the event, the Chairman of the University Council, Prof. Obeng Mireku, threw the unflinching support of Council behind the vision of the Vice-Chancellor to make UCC an ‘Entrepreneurial University’.
He was of the belief that the creation of D-Hub would contribute to the national agenda of creating entrepreneurial minded students who would be job creators and not job seekers.
Prof Obeng Mireku reminded beneficiaries of the Hub to handle with utmost care the logistics and facilities of the Hub to prolong their lifespan.
Source: Documentation and Information Section-UCC