In the era of industry 4.0 businesses are pursuing applications of technological developments towards increased digitization. This in turn necessitates continuous and increasing demand for competence development of professionals. This paper reports a study of the design of university courses targeted towards professionals and investigate how such an educational incentive can act as a catalyst for application of technologies for industry 4.0, including simulation. Quantitative data is collected from fifteen courses addressing the competence need in manufacturing industry, and the qualitative data includes ten focus groups with course participants from companies. The results highlight that the course design enables knowledge exchange between university and industry and between participants. Moreover the pedagogy of working on real cases can facilitate opportunities for introducing new technologies to management. The study shows that the educational incentive explored can act as a catalyst for application of simulation and technologies within industry 4.0 in manufacturing industry.