Demola Oulu open innovation platform fostering students’ creative confidence

Abstract

This master thesis investigates changes that occur in students’ creative confidence when they participate an open innovation project through Demola Oulu. Demola is here addresses as an open innovation platform that enables students to participate companies’ product development processes within interdisciplinary teams. During a Demola project students get experience in brainstorming and validating their ideas. Through the research data gathered by two surveys, three semi-structured interviews and field research this study sheds light on a scarcely researched area of universities as gainers of open innovation. In addition the thesis builds a connection between open innovation and the psychological concept of creative self-efficacy.

The results of this master thesis indicate that opportunity to practice creativity hands-on during the Demola project fostered students’ trust to their creative skills. In addition, social interaction with Demola’s facilitators and the company partners was discovered to strengthen creative confidence if the communication was oriented by trust and encouragement. Thirdly, students gained more trust to themselves as creative actors when the value of their product demo was acknowledged by the company partner or Demola staff. These findings of the research offer practical help for Demola organization as they tell how the Demola project’s positive effect to students’ creative confidence can be optimized.