We see students creating solutions for needs that companies only later recognise, and we witness how the laboratory becomes a launch platform. The question is no longer only whether students are able to solve real problems, but rather how their fresh and curious perspective opens new horizons for a future where there has previously been less courage and willingness to experiment. 

Companies Don’t See the Value in Universities

So why bring companies’ problems into the university? If this were self-evident, universities and companies would already be natural partners. But reality is different. At first glance, many companies do not see value in the university. They fear that the academic world is too slow and complicated, that they would have to spend time they do not have, or share knowledge they are not used to sharing. 

A company no longer has to exert effort or create a separate team that would test high-risk ideas — students can do this for them. Naturally, this requires dialogue and the willingness to share real problems, not safe generalities. But if a company takes that step, the university can offer something that the company itself cannot: fresh points of view, bolder experiments, and space where no one judges the unlikelihood of a new idea too harshly.

But this also changes the world of university teaching and the role of teaching staff. With learning oriented toward cleverness and innovative thinking, teachers must significantly change their teaching methodology. The traditional lecture-based approach — where students passively receive knowledge — does not prepare them to solve rapidly changing, interdisciplinary challenges. Teaching staff must become guides and mentors who create an environment in which students can formulate problems themselves, experiment, fail, and try again. 

Such a role requires flexibility in planning teaching methodology and a readiness for the unexpected: a specific result or prescribed solution cannot always be guaranteed, because the value lies in the process and in new perspectives. 

The New Role of Teaching Staff

From a didactic point of view, this means that teaching staff must place more emphasis on posing questions, discovering problems, and guiding interdisciplinary collaboration. They create a framework in which students can use their creativity and critical thinking and learn how knowledge and skills merge within a single project. 

This presents teachers with plenty of challenges, such as how to assess a student’s learning outcomes when these are not only expressed in a technical solution, but also in the quality of ideas, process management, and collaboration skills. On the other hand, it is an opportunity to develop their own teaching skills and research, since continuous dialogue with students and companies provides new research questions and perspectives on innovation. 

Such a model nurtures students who are ready to enter a world where risks, imperfection, and the unexpected are normal. Teaching staff who can transform their role into that of a guide, mentor, and creator of opportunities build an environment that supports both students’ development and innovation for companies and society. 

Students’ ideas are lofty precisely because they have not accumulated constraints over the years. They do not yet know how things have always been done. They do not fear asking questions that experienced specialists consider impolite or impractical. They are not afraid of the limits of technology because they are still discovering them. Every new solution is for them both a playing field and a place of learning. Therefore, they are inherently ready to lead change, not only to respond to it.

The University Is Not a Company

A university should not act like a company. The role of the university is to create space for ideas that are not yet market-ready but may develop into something valuable in the future. This means a laboratory where it is permitted to make errors. A studio where cross-disciplinary ideas are tested and new solutions are created. A place where sometimes something emerges that was not anyone’s original goal, but which may turn out to be more important than the problem that was being solved. 

A challenge-based learning framework helps the university become such a place. One problem becomes a prototype, and some prototypes may become new companies or create great value for someone. Not every thing may ever grow large, but each teaches something important. And in the end, the university becomes a place to which external stakeholders naturally turn when they need new ideas, skills, and perhaps a vision they have not yet articulated themselves. 

For teaching staff this means making significant changes in their teaching methodology. The traditional lecture-based approach does not provide sufficient preparation for solving interdisciplinary and rapidly changing challenges. From a didactic perspective, emphasis is placed on formulating questions, discovering problems, and guiding interdisciplinary collaboration. Teaching staff continuously learn together with students and companies, gaining new experiences and broadening the boundaries of their research and teaching. 

The question is no longer only whether students are capable of solving real-world problems, but rather how their fresh and curious perspectives often open new horizons for a future where there previously was less courage and willingness to experiment. 

If the university becomes the core of innovation, then the business environment will also change. An ecosystem emerges in which knowledge moves quickly from the lab to the company and where the student, researcher, and entrepreneur are not separate worlds, but members of one whole that creates the future. Teaching staff also benefit enormously: they can participate in interdisciplinary projects, experiment with new teaching and mentoring methods, and gain valuable experience that develops both themselves and the entire innovation ecosystem.

Originally published in the Õpetajate Leht portal