An Approach to the Future of Work: Academia and Industry Alliance to Integrate Work and Study

The highly specialized R&D workers of today need to train for years before entering the job market. Once trained it nevertheless takes them a long time to find a suitable position. At the same time Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are reluctant to invest in R&D because of the uncertainty involved. The case study analyzed in this article represents an experience that addresses both issues at once by generating bonds between the University of Buenos Aires “Master's degree on Embedded Systems” program and SMEs. As part of this initiative, SMEs present product proposals to be developed by students along the Master program, as they get the appropriate skills. Students select proposals and carry them out as their final project, while interacting with the company. The methodology proved to be beneficial for both SMEs and students. Context and motivation are presented, along with implementation details, obtained result analysis and a discussion on how to further extend this kind of collaboration.