By taking a successful training model and expanding it to work for a range of subjects, an ESF-funded university project from Finland is helping entrepreneurship to flourish – and winning awards along the way.

LABDEV is a project from the Oulu University of Applied Sciences (Oamk) which builds on the university's long-running LAB training model.

The original LAB programme, Oulu Games Lab, started in 2012 and focuses on the games industry. It takes interdisciplinary teams of students from a range of fields, as well as professionals in need of re-training, and brings them together to develop industry-specific concepts and product design.

Now, with help from ESF funding, Oamk has been able to create LABDEV, which applies the original model to new areas: health and wellbeing, environment and energy, education technology, and solutions and demos for digital content.