The 3‐3‐3 framework and 7P model for teaching creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship

The education of creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship (CIE) has attracted the attention of the Chinese Government and universities in the past years. The Chinese Ministry of Education recently promulgated “the recommendation on promoting innovation and entrepreneurship education at universities”. However, there are still four basic questions about CIE education, namely, why to teach, what to teach, how to teach and who will teach. This paper aims to discuss the four basic questions and propose an integrated syllabus and a new teaching model.

The paper proposes a 3‐3‐3 syllabus/curriculum framework and a 7P model for teaching CIE. The 3‐3‐3 curriculum covers three steps (i.e. creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship), three new outputs (i.e. new idea, new product and new business) and three training areas (i.e creative thinking in brain, hands‐on experiences in new product development and going to society for market research). The 7P model includes project, performance, process, problem, principle, practice and presentation.

The 3‐3‐3 syllabus and the 7P model provide a practical and operational method for planning and implementing the teaching of CIE in an integrated course or program. The syllabus and the teaching model have been assessed by hundreds of students in the past years with very satisfactory feedback.

The 3‐3‐3 curriculum and 7P model have been implemented at City University of Hong Kong for over ten years and were well accepted and welcomed by students. It will be promoted to more Chinese universities under a project sponsored by China Higher Education Association. A train‐the‐trainer program is also under consideration, with the aim to train more teachers for Chinese universities.

Education of CIE as a separate course is not new. However, how to integrate the three in one course or program is very new. The model reported in this paper is perhaps a contribution in integrating CIE in education.