The aim is to create an operating model to improve the employment of higher education. The project is implemented by the City of Tampere Employment Management Service Unit (Typa), Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), Turku Science Park Oy (TScP), Turku University of Applied Sciences (TY), Turku University of Applied Sciences (TY) and Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (MetropoliaAMK) Unit of Vantaa. The focus groups are students in the graduation phase and job seekers with long work experience, but also micro and small and medium-sized enterprises. Everyone in the model is brought together, innovating growth and work. The aim is to solve the problems of business growth and to find employment for both graduates and experienced professionals. Small enterprises are important sources of employment, with 47 % of jobs in small and micro-enterprises (2013). The number of unemployed persons with higher education is around 20,000 in the Tampere and Turku regions and in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Statute of Akava Higher Educationers 2016). The lack of development resources is often an obstacle to the growth and internationalisation of small enterprises.The measures of the project include Showsmiths and Growthshops. A new model for harnessing the skills of unemployed people will be developed, providing evidence places (stage) through innovation in business cooperation (Kasvunajat). In addition to promoting the growth of companies, the aim is to identify hidden jobs in companies and thus to accelerate employment. The project’s measures have good potential to contribute to the objectives of the Government’s new Entrepreneurship and Employment Programme (04/2016).The project is a joint platform for team learning and peer support, working environment with methods, for experienced experts who have become unemployed and for university students at graduation stage. It brings together a group of developers or several of them to solve the development challenge (blank) of the local client company. The stage can also be virtual and utilises the many digital tools that exist. The growth workshop, on the other hand, refers to the process of dealing with business cases and producing solutions in multidisciplinary teams that collide both with solid experience and with the latest knowledge. In the workshop, companies present their innovation targets and organise meeting, coaching and innovation events for companies and job applicants. The experts trained in the project (seeking for growth) are working together to showcase the opportunities and services of their growth workshops. For experts planning entrepreneurship, the Growth workshop offers support to develop your own business idea and potential partners. The core idea of the growth workshop is to combine multidisciplinary knowledge in innovation activities. Students who have received the latest education and training, are graduating on the one hand and experienced in working life on the other, start working together with a small customer company, breaking down barriers to growth. The focus of operations is the need of a customer company, whether it is related to, for example, the utilisation of digitalisation, product development or internationalisation. The solutions created (action plan, proposal for action) always include a proposal for a job-seeker who is involved in ideas to find their own employment in the target company. Jobs, new jobs, are created precisely through evidence, collisions, cooperation experiences and relationships that occur naturally in community activities and customer projects. In total, about 500 unemployed people and nearly 400 students in graduation are involved in the activities of the project, such as workshop work and business projects. They all gain experience of working in teams dealing with problems in the company, as well as gaining a working relationship network and practical job search capabilities. The aim is that a significant proportion of them employ different means of employment (work experimentation, employment support, assignments by billing work, employment relationship, entrepreneurship).The result is a tested operating model, a service concept that improves the employment of higher education and, at the same time, brings new added value to business. The project offers both ways of preventing unemployment among recent graduates and the challenges of long-term unemployment, and it is believed that they can be exploited nationwide. As a permanent change, the project has the effect of prolonging working careers both for early graduates and for long-term careers at the end of their careers. After the first pilots and the evaluation of experiences, the model can be transferred to other six cities and to other parts of Finland already during the project.