Innovations and sustainable businesses are important driving forces in the society. Projects are sometimes financed by the European Union to support universities in developing knowledge based on the needs of the regional society, where small and medium-sized companies as well as public organizations play a vital role for the local employment. This means that universities can strengthen the private companies and public organizations in this digitalization era, based on its specific knowledge and the potential of its competence. This paper reports from a project conducted in a regionof the south west part of Sweden. The aim of the paper is to explore how a university can contribute to the regional society characterized by industrial small and medium-sized companies, in order to reach a more sustainable production and consumption and a healthy population in the society. The creation of simulators and demonstrators have made it possible to design test- and demonstrator arenas, where new ideas can be transformed into practical use.

The demonstrators have been created based on a resource-effective and a user-friendly perspective, so the products and services should be easy to understand, access, use and maintain. Moreover, an equality perspective has been pervading all the innovations in the project. A university can thereby attract more students and researchers, to increase its collaboration with both national and international universities companies and public organizations, and position its research in an international competitive context. The collaboration between companies, public organizations and academia has made it possible to create competence, and to get ideas for new and innovative business missions and to develop prototypes based on digital simulators.