Demola is an international innovation challenge platform, which works to bridge the long-existing gap between companies and university students. Demola Global, established in Tampere, Finland, brings a team of multidisciplinary university students and company’s experts to work together and co-create a solution for an innovation challenge set by the company.
On June 2019, King’s College joined Demola Alliance amongst 16 countries, as an exclusive partner to operate Demola program in Nepal. Demola brings together more than 50 universities, involving 7,50,000 students and leading companies from all over the world.
The first cycle of Demola in Nepal started with four companies – Annapurna Media Network, City Planning Commission (KMC), Dekhapadhi and NEXT Venture Corp – setting out their individual challenges for their respective teams to go through. The following are the challenges of each company in brief:
The finalized challenges were uploaded on the official site of Demola for MBA students at King’s College. Students from multidisciplinary backgrounds applied to the challenge of their preference. Based on the students’ written application and interview rounds, 20 students, 5 for each of the four companies were selected based on their interest, experience, competency and diversity. We had students from engineering, entrepreneurial, IT, management, art, social work, veterinarian backgrounds.
DEMOLA Kick-off
The first milestone of the Demola program in Nepal kicked off on October 21 (9 am – 3 pm) at King’s College program hall. All four teams consisting of 5 student members and 1-2 company members in each team were present. Teams from Annapurna Media Network, City Planning Commission (KMC), Dekhapadhi and NEXT Venture Corp were all set to understand the Demola process and get to know the team members better.
Demola Kick-off is primarily conducted to give a closer look at the Demola co-creation process. The teams were explained what’s going to happen in the next 8-weeks they had signed up for. Likewise, the event intends to bring the teams together and establish a common understanding of the challenge. Various tools and guidance were provided to meet the objectives. By the end of the event, the teams were also shared Demola tools to begin the problem-solving process.
DEMOLA Jam 1
After almost 2 weeks of insights gathering, the teams came together for Jam 1 on November 4 ( 8 am – 1 pm) and November 5 (8 am to 1 pm) at King’s College, Room no 202. In between Kick-off and Jam 1, the teams were meeting to brainstorm and plan steps ahead. They were also visiting stakeholders related to the challenge in order to understand them and their actual problems. Meanwhile, the team members were connected, supported and guided by the Demola facilitators through Slack.
On the 2 days of Jamming, the teams were facilitated to synthesize their findings from the field. They were given enough time within their teams to brainstorm further on their stakeholders and findings. The entire day on day one, the teams worked on crystallizing their problems. On the second day, they entered into generating numerous ideas to address the problems they had identified.
Jam 1 is aimed at moving the teams ahead in understanding the challenge furthermore. Just gathering plenty of information isn’t enough. They were also provided with tools to make meaning out of the findings. This milestone intends to make teams experience the lean development cycle and follow the method in the process ahead.
DEMOLA Jam 2
At the stage, the teams had generated a few ideas to test if they would address the problem. The ideas were also a medium to collect more insights from the users to understand the problem deeper.
On Jam 2, November 25 ( 9 am – 2 pm) the COO of Demola Global, Janne Eskola came all the way from Finland to facilitate the session. He guided teams to look at their solution from various lenses. Experts related to particular challenges were invited to interact with the teams. Mr. Sixit Bhatta, CEO, Tootle, Mr. Manohar Adhikari, CTO, Foodmandu, Mr. Ujaya Shakya, MD, Outreach Nepal interacted with the teams and shared their views.
Jam 2 is aimed at helping teams rethink their progress so far and make their solutions more concrete as they proceed. By inviting experts, the teams were set into feedback receiving mode.
At the final milestone of Demola, the teams finally presented the solutions they had worked hard for the last 8-weeks. They presented their solution and findings in the presence of the Finnish Ambassador to Nepal, H.E. Pertti Anttinen, senior management of the challenge partners and a few guests. The event was held at Attic, Gyaneshwor on December 19 from 3 pm to 5 pm.
Along with the presentation, the teams handed over the Concept Documents to the respective challenge partners. The Concept Document entails comprehensive elaboration of what the teams did, how and why.
Demola Demo-day is conducted to showcase the teams’ hard work and solutions they generated through co-creation. It is also about celebrating the effort teams have put together and exchanging their learning.
The partner company sets a challenge in the form of a question. The nature of the challenge question ranges from any theme, phenomena, technology or possibility that the company is keen on exploring, such that it opens new possibilities and gives direction to their current business.
For each specific challenge set by the company, a team of 4-5 highly motivated students from diverse backgrounds are carefully selected. A complete team is formed with the selected students, company’s experts and a Demola facilitator, who will work together to co-create a solution.
For 8 weeks, the team works through a globally verified process, with a simple structure and expert facilitation service, to co-create an innovative solution. This agile process combines design thinking, scenario approach and demo-building.
A solution is generated towards the end of 8-weeks, which the company will use to generate new product development and gain insight about the future development of the company. There is also a provision of global IPR and agreement management.
With the increasing complexity of the global ecosystem, an innovative and futuristic approach seem inevitable to prepare ourselves in advance. Demola serves as a strong means to bring university students, university and companies together to co-create solutions for unprecedented futuristic challenges. The wide networks of the Demola alliance make it unique worldwide as it provides a platform to learn and engage in the ecosystem.
Stressing on the need to incorporate fresh perspectives of the young generation into problem-solving, the Creative Director of Demola Global, Mr Jere Wessman asserted, “Co-creation leads to discoveries that are lost by looking only from one perspective, making problem-solving inefficient.” He shared that the core team of Demola, comprising of
Demola is an international innovation challenge platform that brings together students and leading brands. Demola innovation challenges bring together over 50 universities, 750,000 students and the leading companies from around the world. Currently, it operates in 17 countries: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Portugal, Mexico, Namibia,