DigiBusiness

Demola Builds New Operating Cultures

The Demola innovation environment in Tampere is already attracting more participants than it can accommodate. At Demola, students from different fields innovate together.

Demola’s primary objective is to teach competent operators from different fields to work together in a multidisciplinary environment. Learning takes place through doing, in the form of agile innovation projects. Another objective is to produce innovative and functional demos. “Not suggestions as to how an innovation might work, but concrete realisations of good ideas,” explains Petri Räsänen of Demola, who works as Division Director at Hermia Oy.

Innovations are mainly created by business partners bringing their ideas for student teams to develop. Demola offers the teams an environment, a process and tools, but they must identify their own working methods and the solutions to any problems that may arise. It is essential that the immaterial rights to the innovations are retained by the teams that developed them, who can then sell right of use to the company in question. A third objective is to generate new business around the innovations.

In its first year of operation, Demola involved 157 students from Tampere University of Technology, TAMK University of Applied Sciences, the University of Tampere, the University of Helsinki and Aalto University School of Science and Technology. There are 22 business partners, and around twenty students have already found a job through Demola.Three out of four students involved in Demola are seriously considering entrepreneurship as an option. So far, one company has been registered in the Trade Register, and three more are being established.

“We have been positively surprised by the clear demand for this kind of operating model, and by how many students have found their way to Demola,” Räsänen says. Innovations developed at Demola so far include mind-controlled games, a social city guide and an operating model for ecological tourist centres.

OSKE as a Launchpad

Operating in the historic environment of Tampere’s Finlayson area, Demola is an extension of the Demopaja “demo workshop” project. It has been used for planning a new innovation environment to meet the needs of the business world in Tampere, pondering how innovations and innovative experts might be simultaneously generated to meet the needs of businesses. The debate was extended to encompass universities that had realised the possibilities of learning by doing. Demola’s projects are now included in some of the courses offered by Tampere’s two universities and one university of applied sciences.

“The operating model was born out of the Centre of Expertise Programme (OSKE). For Demola, OSKE was like a rapid reaction force for achieving a swift launch,” Räsänen explains. Having been set up with OSKE funding, the project now employs two people and has acquired its own facilities. It was important to find a neutral space outside all campus areas. After the successful launch of Demola, OSKE will take a backseat. Business partners, Creative Tampere (the business development policy of the City of Tampere) and the Pirkanmaa Employment and Economic Development Centre have been handed the reins in terms of funding. The first business to become involved was Nokia.

International Dimensions

2010 is the year of Demola Goes Global, which means more international dimensions. One third of students at Demola are already from outside Finland. One of the by-products of the OSKE network is a “grown-ups’ version” of Demola: Protomo, the first open innovation environment for professionals in the field, was established last autumn in Jyväskylä, and Salo and Tampere are next in line.

Getting away from the Subcontractor Mentality

Räsänen, who has long been involved in developing business operations and networking, predicts an increasing need for environments such as Demola in the future. Email exchanges and occasional seminars are not enough for proper networking; ideas must be refined in a real environment. Similar initiatives should continue to be funded by public and private investors. One of Räsänen’s most ambitious aims is to be rid of the subcontractor mentality. A genuine, creative partnership should not consist of someone doing as they are told by someone else: initiative-taking, ideation and cooperation must arise at all levels of operation.

www.protomo.fi