For a long time, employers have argued that academically well-qualified young graduates lack the practical skills required to succeed in the workplace.
In particular, their ability to solve problems and work as part of a team is often below what employers say they need.
Some faculties within third-level institutions do better than others at teaching these skills, but by and large, they are not an integral part of most courses. This is something the founders of education platform Anytime Creativity are on a mission to change.
“Our platform facilitates students to work together on real-world challenges as part of their coursework, learning by doing and building the skills that employers are actually looking for,” says Jack Brophy, who cofounded the business with his father, Fergal, in 2024.
“Collaborative active learning, where students apply knowledge to real-world challenges rather than passively absorbing content, is widely recognised as the approach best placed to address this gap. The problem is it’s not reaching students at scale,” Brophy says.
“Two-thirds of educators say a lack of time and training are the main barriers, while existing tools don’t give them the support they need to introduce structured, immersive, problem-solving experiences into their assignments.”
Brophy says Anytime Creativity solves the problem by doing the heavy lifting for educators, with a platform that works for any discipline, from medicine and engineering to business and the arts.
Assignments can be tailored to any subject area, and automation reduces the administration load on those setting them up.
“The result is active learning, with academic oversight, that works at scale, leading to better student engagement and graduates who are more prepared for the world of work,” Brophy says.
The company’s platform is designed to handle multiple functions at once. Unlike most edtech tools that do one thing – such as providing feedback – Anytime Creativity brings all the elements of active learning together in one place. It combines real-time collaboration, staged problem solving, peer and expert feedback and AI analysis. At the end of the process, students have practical examples of their work to present to potential employers.
Anytime Creativity had its first full year in business in 2025 and charges colleges a set-up fee, combined with a per student, per module cost. Paid pilots have been running in a number of Irish universities, including Trinity College, UCD, TU Dublin, UCC, SETU and ATU.
Examples of use cases so far include modules for medicine, biomedical science, psychology, education, sustainability, engineering, marketing, strategy and entrepreneurship.
The company’s main focus to date has been on bringing third-level colleges on board, but the platform will also work for industry.
For example, a pilot is in the pipeline with the ESB as part of its apprenticeship training programme.
Anytime Creativity has been built for global use, but for the last year, the emphasis has been on the Irish market and the slow process of bringing individual academics on board.
However, as more academics become aware of the platform, Brophy expects momentum to build and, ultimately, for the system to be centrally procured for use throughout an institution.
“We started with Ireland and this gave us a really strong base to learn and iterate quickly. But we’re now expanding and have begun working with the University of Oxford, the University of Birmingham, the University of Maryland in the US, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa,” says Brophy, who estimates development costs to date at about €100,000 between personal investment, grants from Dublin local enterprise office and innovation vouchers from Enterprise Ireland.
“Our biggest competitor is resistance to change,” he says.
“Higher education moves slowly and convincing institutions to try something new is often the hardest part. In terms of direct competitors, there’s nothing similar. What sets us apart is the breadth of disciplines we work across.”
Jack Brophy studied Marketing, Innovation and Technology at DCU, where he cofounded the Marketing and Innovation Society and was heavily involved in student-led events.
“That experience gave me a real appreciation for what students actually want from their education,” he says.
“Then, after college, I joined property tech start-up Offr and it was a brilliant education in what it takes to build a company from the early stages. From there, I spent time at Workday in London and Carma in Sydney, which gave me exposure to how larger, world-class organisations operate.”
Brophy and chief product officer Jack Carey now run the business day to day, with Fergal Brophy taking a broader, strategic role.
“Having Fergal as a co-founder has been invaluable,” says Jack Brophy. “He has spent over a decade at the UCD Innovation Academy, specialising in collaborative active learning. He has also cofounded and scaled two businesses, so he understands both the educator and the founder journey inside out. Between the two of us, we felt we had a fairly unique combination of perspectives to build something like this.”
Asked about the hardest part of starting the business, Brophy says the loneliness of entrepreneurship came as a surprise.
“I’d always wanted to start a business and was ready for the hard work and the inevitable setbacks, but I hadn’t really considered what it would feel like to no longer be part of a big, buzzy team. I’d always fed off the energy of workmates and the social nature of working with people around you.
“When you’re starting out, it’s just you and your co-founder, and nobody really prepares you for that,” he says. “When things are tough, there’s no manager to give you a boost, no colleague to grab a coffee or a pint with and offload to. You have to find your own way through it, and that’s where friends and family become everything.”
