The Future of Education

Not so long ago the cooperation between Slovenian universities and companies was very infrequent and the collaboration model was weak. The companies were complaining they don't have access to researchers and their work, and new innovative and out-of-the-box student thinking at the universities. On the other side, students and researchers at the universities were missing real collaboration with companies. In order to provide some changes in the Slovenian education system, the Demola concept was introduced in 2013. Demola is an international network that operates through local Demola Centers and affiliate locations around the world [1]. It is an open innovation platform and university–business collaboration model for the creation of new products and services [2]. Demola brings together companies, universities and students and presents a co-creation concept that is geared to solve real challenges. Multidisciplinary student teams work to solve challenges sourced from companies and other organizations. Every project has an outcome – be it a new concept, a demo, or a prototype. If the partner company finds the outcome useful, the company can license or purchase the outcome, and take it for further development. Statistics after more than 250 Demola projects show, that demos and outcomes are valuable to more than 85% of cooperating companies, which also bought the license from the students [2]. In the paper we are going to present how Demola was introduced in Slovenia, our experience and outcomes for the Slovenian education system.