Maynooth University (MU), established as an autonomous university in 1997, traces its origins to the Royal College of St. Patrick founded in 1795. With over 15,000 students from more than 100 countries, Maynooth offers a diverse range of undergraduate, Master’s, and PhD programs across various disciplines, including humanities, sciences, and social sciences. The university emphasises an interdisciplinary research approach, supported by its research institutes and centres, and values both research and teaching equally.
One of these research institutes is the Innovation Value Institute (IVI), which was established in 2006. IVI is a multidisciplinary research institute specialising in digital transformation and technology adoption. As digitalisation impacts businesses across all sectors, IVI addresses strategic repositioning, and technology adoption, and helps enterprises navigate digital transformation, uncovering new market opportunities and service offerings while considering economic, societal, and business implications. IVI has a strong track record of industry collaboration, public sector projects and European research projects.
The digital transformation capabilities in IVI align extensively with the requirements of the DigiFABS project. This 3-year project based on increasing capabilities and skills of F&B industry stakeholders in 5 EU countries (including Ireland) also capitalises on the IVI trademarked ‘IT Capability Maturity Framework’, a framework created to derive real, measurable business value from technology. The framework assists organisations across industries, both public and private, in generating value and innovation. This framework, along with the digital transformation capabilities, make IVI well suited to lead the work package Summer School & Challenge (WP4), conceptualising a summer school to train students in their role as responsible dynamic digital change agents (RDDCA) for SMEs in the F&B industry. This WP will be based on the prior investigative work packages which aim to build a digital transformation maturity model for F&B SMEs and a skills concept for the change agents (RDDCA). This project is a step forward in strengthening IVI’s commitment to digital transformation and leveraging its innovation capabilities in the F&B industry to help SMEs acquire the necessary digital skills to evolve.
