-We have seen that there exist many good ideas at SMEs in forest and wood industry which can be translated into industrial student projects such as thesis work or internships. We wanted to connect academia with our companies, and there was no formal structure for this before, says Malin Löfving (PhD), Project Leader for KVIST. Matchmaking is one of the key activities in the project aiming at matching the good ideas from SMEs with academia’s offers, Malin continues.For companies, the collaboration oftentimes start with the company receiving a student for the first time. For the students, it is often about gaining a greater understanding of the industry. In the process, my colleagues and I are involved in supporting both students and the company, says Thomas Strand, coach at Träcentrum. So far, 23 SMEs have begun to collaborate with students. One example is from a small manufacturer of interior products. The company wanted an analysis of the current production layout. A group of students from the production development program conducted their thesis project at this company and recommended a new layout for the company. Another example is a furniture company which manufactures new as well as remanufacture old furniture. In this company, new production and remanufacturing coexist, which sometimes causes clashes in production. A group of students from the business administration program investigated how remanufacturing and new production can coexist under the same roof.

To increase collaboration with SMEs, it is essential to build a long-term relation and have a dialogue. Using an intermediary organisation has been a success factor as they not only transfer knowledge, but translate academia offers to company needs and vice versa. They also provide a large network of companies, in our case about 400 companies in Sweden. SMEs are positive to collaborate with the universities, especially with the students. If the companies have not collaborated with universities before, we begin by initiating a student project or thesis at the company. This has so far been successful, and we see a progress that companies ask for more students at different programs than the traditional program related to forest and wood industry. Most of the students we meet have no experience or knowledge of forest and wood industry nor of SMEs. Therefore, the first major challenge has been to match a student with the company´s industrial projects. However, to our surprise this has changed and now it is much easier to match students with companies. How did this happen? There are two reasons: one is that coaches from Träcentrum present the industry for lecturers and students from different programs at the two universities and the other reason is our participation at student career days. Now we get requests almost every week from students who are interested in conducting a student project in the forest or wood industry.

The novel way of working is general and there is large potential to scale up this initiative to other intermediary organisations and SMEs within other industries. At the School of Engineering, Jönköping University, we have already begun to talk to other intermediary organisations that could act as translators between academia and SMEs. Our immediate plans are to refine and further develop the way of working to secure the continuation of the collaboration between the actors in the project as well as continue the matchmaking between SMEs and academia. The School and Engineering at Jönköping University and Träcentrum have a close collaboration that will continue as Träcentrum is a strategic partner cluster to the university.