Creative and innovative competence as a task for adult education

Innovation is seen as a key factor in economic competitiveness and persons who can contribute to and participate in innovation are much wanted. Consequently adult education as well as other parts of educational systems is confronted with demands that the learning environments and the teaching should foster creativity, innovative skills and entrepreneurship. But what is the nature of such skills, and how can they be developed through education? In the paper I present and discuss a way of approaching this problem. I focus on three interlinked themes: (1) the concept of creative and innovative competence, which I understand as the capacity of a person, given the resources and the situation allows it, to effect visible innovation in a domain of knowledge and practise; (2) the patterns of resources and participation associated with this type of competence, drawing especially on a Danish survey on the distribution of different types of competence in the population; and (3) the potential contributions of work-related general adult education, illustrated through a case study of a cooperation and communication course in a metal works factory.