Identification and development of scientific and organisational synergies with a kick-off seminar

Doctoral students of the Laboratory of Food Process Engineering need to acquire, solidify and practice scientific and organisational synergy skills. In this context a kick-off seminar led by the Institute for Communication and Management (IKF) will take place in September 2011 during the annual laboratory seminar week. On the first day of the seminar two IKF staff, the doctoral students and colleagues will identify group ideas, values and visions. Key methods will be deduced with the help of thematic scientific and organisational cases. On the following two days synergy goals and tasks will be defined and prioritised.
Via their existing creative skills and the methods learned, students will practice working at interception points and develop their own projects. They will reflect together on their work and also deploy the feedback methods of the «Entwicklung und 1. Durchführung eines Teamkreativitätstrainings-Seminars» project to guarantee the performance assessment and sustainability of the selected goals and tasks. After ca. 6 months IKF will undertake a wrap-up. The remaining problems will be identified, methods will be reflected on and complementary skills will be acquired. Research-oriented learning in the laboratory will guarantee the individual, application-oriented consolidation of acquired skills. ETH courses on further «soft skills» can then enter the doctoral student discussion via focused knowledge management.

• Takes advantage of synergies within the research group
• Intensified exchange of information and skills in groups
• Organisational successes will be visible after a short time

Up to now few points of interception in the scientific and organisational work within research groups have been deliberately sought and explored in a suitable methodological form which strengthens the cooperation of doctoral students.

Conducting this not as a seminar week but in several smaller units, even within the normal working environment, would be advantageous to facilitate even more fluid integration into daily research work.

Doctoral students above all valued the collective work on themes and organisational improvements. They also valued the flow of information within the group, especially the relaying of knowledge from experienced to younger doctoral students, which made initial orientation easier.

• Deploying external instructors helps to identify ‹blind spots›.
• Openness and motivation to develop new (organisational) elements/procedures are required.
• Particularly suitable for large research groups.