Practical experience
Landing a job takes more than talent, it takes action. Demola gives you the chance to tackle real challenges, collaborate with others, and build proof of what you can do even when things are uncertain. By actively participating in a Demola project, you can turn your skills into competencies and concrete experience.
Partnered with Innovative Companies
Our platform, created together with leading companies and professors, connects you to real-world innovation projects. You’ll work as part of a team on an innovation and development project, guided by Demola’s expert facilitators. Participating in a project will give you practical experience and the confidence to deal with complexity in any job.
At Demola, innovation projects are built around real-world project topics co-designed with companies and public-sector organisations. If selected, you'll join an innovation team working to develop meaningful solutions that respond to validated needs.
Our projects tackle complex, relevant problems grounded in industry and societal needs. You'll work in a team to design and demo solutions, benefiting from the insights and findings of previous Demola projects. Most Demola projects last around two months, but the exact duration depends on the programme they are part of.
Each team benefits from expert guidance through coaching sessions and facilitated community events. Demola's facilitators bring years of experience in innovation and adapt their support to match your ambition and commitment. You are expected to take an active role, both individually and as a team.
You'll co-create with other teams and Demola's experts, and validate and test your solutions with real stakeholders to continuously refine your approach. High-performing teams gain access to a network of professionals from Demola's industry partners for further input and exposure.
You'll build in-demand, career-ready skills in creative problem-solving, AI-assisted innovation, project management, international collaboration, and resilience - all while working in an environment that mirrors real innovation practices.
Your team owns the outcomes created during the project. Use them in job interviews, your portfolio, a Master's thesis, or even as the foundation of a startup. In some cases, your work may also earn you academic credit (ECTS) if you are a student.
The impact
Ready to turn your skills into competence? Our claims are backed by feedback from our community of participants and alumni.
Strongly agree (49.3%)
Agree (43.6%)
Neither agree or disagree (5.3%)
Disagree (1.3%)
Strongly disagree (0.5%)
2 272 people took part in the survey.
New skills
65.6%
Valuable work experience
63.9%
New friends
51.5%
Startup ideas
34.4%
International teamwork experience
30.5%
Industry contacts
23.9%
Self-esteem
23.9%
New motivation to study
22.8%
Confidence in career choices
20.3%
Researcher contacts
17.6%
Better position in the labor market
13.5%
Other
1.5%
Based on Q4/2022 survey
If you’re currently studying at or near one of our Demola locations or partner universities, you’re welcome to join a Demola project.
Finland:Tampere, Oulu, Vaasa, Turku, Jyväskylä
Japan:Tokyo, Sapporo
Czechia:Prague, Ostrava
Hungary:Budapest
United Kingdom:Glasgow
India:DelhiIn our partner cities, the projects are also open to graduates and professionals who are exploring new career paths or interested in co-creating and launching startups in the future.
Finland:Tampere, Oulu, Riihimäki
Many alumni have participated in more than one Demola project – the current record is seven. For active alumni, we facilitate further development in their academic studies or future careers:
Explore or fine-tune your Master’s thesis topic through a Demola project and find a potential industry collaborator for your Master’s thesis after the project.
Develop an expert profile that highlights your project contributions, as well as innovation and interpersonal skills. Top-performing participants will have their expert profiles shared and recommended within Demola’s partner network, verifying their skills and proactive mindset.
Build on your project results, connect with like-minded teammates, and use your entrepreneurial mindset to lay the groundwork for a startup.
Get onboarded with Demola
Create a Demola profile.
Browse project in your location and apply to those that interest you.
If you get selected, confirm your seat and start the teamwork.
Apply to one or more projects today!
Tampere, Vaasa
Human Beings in the Modern World
Finnish healthcare services are state-of-the-art in global comparison (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376344/care-systems-ranking-of-countries-worldwide/). Basic services are available to everyone living in Finland, and the specialised healthcare services are of extremely high quality. However, the general opinion and media stories often paint a bleak picture. Newspapers are filled with mostly negative stories about the healthcare sector, there are significant cost-cuts being implemented, and healthcare professionals are under immense pressure. Yet, hundreds of thousands of people receive treatment and help every day. Finns are also the happiest taxpayers in the world, partly thanks to the healthcare services we receive in return. Because of this, we want to explore different ways for the public healthcare sector to show and tell how they are helping us each and every day. How would you, as a university student, want the public healthcare sector to communicate in an authentic, honest, and transparent way in the future? How should a public healthcare service provider communicate and brand themselves as authentic and trustworthy? How can they respond to the never-ending bad publicity by showing and highlighting the daily small wins and their integral role in our welfare state? What could be some of the more innovative ways to communicate about daily operations in the public healthcare sector? There are some great examples of authentic branding and communication, such as the reality TV show "Elossa 24H" and the Finnish tax administration’s social media presence (https://www.instagram.com/verohallinto/). Join the project to design new approaches and attitudes towards communicating success stories, mistakes, and the daily life of the public healthcare sector transparently!
Apply by 18 Sept
.png&w=750&q=75 "Modular Healthcare Centre")
Future Expert Program - Riihimaki, Oulu, Tampere
Value Creators of Tomorrow
With varying student numbers, declining budgets, and uncertain future projections, modular (or container) schools have long provided dynamic, cost-efficient, and flexible learning environments. Healthcare is now facing similar challenges – so what if we started applying modular solutions to healthcare as well? Urbanisation continues to draw people to cities, and smaller municipalities are shrinking. This means that there is not a valid enough reason to keep all the healthcare centres running across Finland. How might a small, modular healthcare centre operate? What services could it provide, and how would it feel from the citizens’ perspective? Imagine a future with a few larger hospitals supported by a network of small, agile, modular healthcare centres distributed across healthcare districts. How would this change access to care and the way people receive treatment? We aim to develop a holistic concept for modular healthcare centres, exploring what they could offer citizens. We are looking for talents interested in healthcare, architecture, design, service design, and digitalisation to envision the future possibilities of modular healthcare centres.
Apply by 21 Sept
Future Expert Program - Riihimaki, Oulu
Human Beings in the Modern World
Healthcare regions in Finland utilise a Home Hospital service (Kotisairaala) to provide hospital-level care directly in patients' homes. It's designed for individuals who require acute, subacute, or palliative care but can be treated outside a traditional hospital. The Home Hospital team, typically comprising doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, offers services such as intravenous therapies, wound care, medication management, monitoring of vital signs, and symptom control. The aim is to promote recovery in a familiar environment, reduce hospital stays, and enhance quality of life, often allowing patients to remain close to their families. In this service, involving patients and their close ones is essential, as patients live at home and are monitored around the clock. A new resource planning system is being developed for Home Hospital professionals to optimise care and improve patient experience. This system tracks equipment and personnel and supports planning the best possible care. We want to explore what kind of value adding data points could be shared with the patients and/or their families to increase transparency and perceived service quality. What kind of (real-time or static) information would be most valuable for patients? How can we create new forms of value by increasing transparency? This project aims to design a user experience that allows patients and their families to request, update, and track Home Hospital services in the future.
Apply by 21 Sept
.png&w=750&q=75 "AI & Transparency for Journalism")
Future Expert Program - Riihimaki
Byte-powered Future
Finland has 108 cities and 200 municipalities, each with its own decision-making bodies led by politicians and/or municipal officials. This generates thousands of public records every month from municipal council, board, and local government meetings, creating an enormous database of decision-making documents that is impossible for anyone to follow in detail. Journalists are working hard to keep up with this information, but the sheer volume makes it an overwhelming task. How could we create a tool to help journalists identify the most important municipal decisions and plans, enabling them to produce insightful stories and hold decision-makers accountable? How might AI be used to scan these vast collections of documents for the most influential decisions, illegal procedures, odd budgeting practices, or other anomalies? How should the tool visualise this information and highlight potentially interesting topics for journalists? The goal is not for AI to write stories – that remains the journalist’s role – but to increase transparency and guide journalists toward the hidden stories unfolding every week across Finland.
Apply by 21 Sept
Future Expert Program - Riihimaki, Helsinki, Tampere, Vaasa
Human Beings in the Modern World
Smart cities are making people’s life easier around the world, even where we don’t see the value directly. With technology-enhanced humane sensory, it might be possible to see cities that are truly smart in a whole new way. Imagine that you have all the possible and relevant data available and delivered to you exactly as you like, when you need, and you are in the core of this project. Assuming situation where city dwellers are equipped with AR glasses, smart audio devices, wearable cameras and whatnot, how might open data and other available data be delivered with the intent of added value to everyday life? What are some troublesome, boring of difficult situations where being a “lightweight android” could help massively? How will going by our everyday lives be in the future with the constant enhancing of modern, wearable technologies? What are the features of a smart city providing the new ways of living that create the gold standard? This project takes you walking around in a city, identifying and innovating the superb, smart ways of everyday life of the future. As the result, various data sources will be combined for value-adding functionalities, visualized as realistically as possible.
Apply by 21 Sept
Remote
Future of Work
Looking at the world, the food crisis is becoming a reality due to climate change and population growth. Against this backdrop, our awareness of “food” has begun to change dramatically. In the past, the most important value was “taste,” but now that is no longer the only factor in choosing food. Nowadays, however, people no longer choose food for its taste alone. and "Where, who, and how was this food produced? In fact, there are already food products that are gaining consumer support based on values other than "taste. For example, the transparency of branded Wagyu beef, for which the breeding history of each individual cow is clearly documented, creates trust and is the reason why consumers choose it even at a high price. Yubari melons, whose brand value is enhanced by strict quality standards and the pride of the producers, and Sekiaji and Sekisaba mackerel, known for their traditional fishing methods and thorough management, are also widely recognized for their stories and reliability, which go beyond “taste” itself. A new dining experience has begun, in which people “eat the information” and "taste the story. Such traceability and branding efforts are spreading in various fields, but there are still some areas that have not been fully explored. One such area is the eel, which has a special place in the hearts of the Japanese people. Eels have been a colorful part of Japanese food culture since ancient times, and have been an indispensable ingredient for seasonal milestones and celebrations. However, its world has yet to establish a grading system like that of wagyu beef or branding where the producer is visible, like that of fruits. There is still much room to clearly define and present to society “values other than taste,” such as the story behind each eel, the producer's commitment, and the characteristics of the environment in which the eels are raised. While preserving the tradition and culture of eels, we want to create a future in which everyone correctly understands their intrinsic value and can enjoy them with wholehearted satisfaction. To achieve this, we need a new “standard of value for eels” that connects the producer to the dining table. To deliver Japan's eel culture to the next generation and to the world-- Why don't you take the first step toward this goal with us? In Japan, there are many foodstuffs whose quality is graded according to clear standards. For example, Hokkaido is proud of its Yubari melon. The highest quality melons are treated like works of art. In the world of beef, the “A5 rank” is based on the degree of sashi (graininess) and the quality of the meat. These ranks are widely recognized as proof of taste and rarity, and because of these standards, we understand their value and have special expectations of them. The existence of such clear quality standards is not merely an indicator of "good quality. For the producers, it is a great motivation to earn higher profits by having their carefully cultivated products duly evaluated. For consumers, it is also a great advantage to be able to choose products that are worth the price. This trust, which says, “If it is of this quality, I should be able to expect it to taste this good,” drives purchasing behavior. Above all, the virtuous cycle of improved quality for producers and increased willingness to purchase will protect and nurture the culture and traditions of the food products, leading to the sustainable development and revitalization of the industry as a whole. Then, what about the “eels” we handle? Eels have been deeply rooted in Japanese food culture since ancient times and have attracted many people, but in fact, there are no nationally standardized “grades” or clear “quality standards” established for eels like there are for other foodstuffs. Of course, each restaurant has its own specialties and pride in its production area, cultivation method, secret taste of kabayaki sauce, and the degree to which the eel is grilled by the craftsman. However, there are few objective indicators to identify “a truly valuable fish,” and it is not easy to judge the balance between price and quality. This makes it difficult for producers and stores with great skills and commitment to excellence to be recognized, leaving consumers without a standard by which to judge a good product as good. We want to create an innovative and universally acceptable standard for quality in order to pass on the Japanese eel culture to the next generation and to the entire world. We will share these new standards with the entire industry, aiming to improve and revitalize the brand value of the entire eel industry. At the same time, we would like to draw a roadmap for the entire industry to move forward hand in hand, considering initiatives to warmly follow up those who may have difficulty in keeping up with us. Now, let us create a new history for the eel industry with our own hands!
Apply by 22 Sept
See how Demola has helped students around the world succeed in their careers and personal lives.
Master’s Degree student in Research and Innovation in Higher Education
Excellent
20/04/2023
“I enjoy connecting with other people who are not from the same area and field, and creating new things. I think Demola is a very great platform and, since I’m interested in education, I think this is a great idea to help students and other people to learn in a different way and to be closer to the work life.”
Master’s Student in Public and Global Health
Excellent
20/04/2023
“I joined Demola for the third time already, since I enjoy how my personal skills are developing here and I love the feeling of freedom of thoughts, to be able to think, feel and express anything.”
Master’s Student in Sustainable Digitalisation
Excellent
20/04/2023
“I wanted more experience in interdisciplinary project work and real-life, tangible development of solutions with external stakeholders. I also wanted to practice what the design process is like in the real world and how to present novel ideas in an attractive, business- oriented way. And Demola delivered!”
Master’s Degree Student in Engineering and Technology
Excellent
10/06/2022
“In Demola we focused on creating solutions that can and should be applicable and should happen in real life, concrete and implementable solutions that can have an impact. Those type of solutions that go way beyond than just making a new website or a nice social media page.”
Master of Business
Excellent
17/04/2023
“If you have successfully completed the Demola project, it is proof of your passion and that your mindset is inevitably customer-oriented. Demola is definitely an experience I can recommend to all students.”
Get the information you need with our comprehensive list of FAQs below:
Is it free to join Demola projects?
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Join Demola and work on career-relevant projects with global impact.
