If your business was wrestling with a problem and your staff were running into the sand, would you turn to a group of schoolchildren for the answer?

A surprising number of Scottish businesses have already done so. Stagecoach, Oracle, the Co-op, British Nuclear Group and BP, to name but a few, are early clients of Space Unlimited, a social business that links companies up with schools, putting pupils to work on a problem.

The company was dreamed up by director Heather Sim, then part of Scottish Enterprise's strategy directorate. When SE's financial situation became erratic, she persuaded them to allow her to leave and spin it out as a social enterprise.

For businesses, it is a chance to call on a more youthful perspective to help tackle challenges. For the students involved, the experience can feed directly into enterprise education or the various "capacities" that make up the new curriculum for excellence.

As board member and sales manager Vincent Gibson puts it: "Businesses are always complaining of a lack of new ideas. Young people say they want to be creative but don't have a voice. We bring together the people who say they aren't getting heard with the people who say they aren't hearing anything."

Generally, one or more schools will work with a company for a term or so, addressing a set problem and allowing the young people to tackle it in their own way. This is a crucial part of the process, according to Kevin Lelland, Space Unlimited's project manager.

Neither companies nor teachers dictate the direction a project unfolds in. "Companies often come up with a really interesting question and it is difficult not to start trying to answer that for them. But adults can be risk-averse. The process of going off at a tangent can in itself be creative."

Gibson says scientific evidence shows that young people genuinely do think differently from adults. Space Unlimited has also observed that pupils work in a very democratic way, and have a very low tolerance for cant. "Young people are the best bull**** detectors in the world," he says.

Some have used Space Unlimited to tap into young people's views on how they would like to be approached by business. Stagecoach, for instance, asked pupils to look at how buses could be made appealing to young people. Chief executive Brian Souter praised the ideas they came up with afterwards, adding: "One idea in particular struck a chord and I've asked my marketing team to look at how we can pilot it."

Sometimes, the company involved finds out that it isn't even asking the right question. When Cooperative Development Scotland (CDS) asked pupils from Knightswood Secondary what would make co-ops matter to young people, the schoolchildren quickly put them straight. "The group told them: you've got it wrong. Young people don't even know what co-ops are," explains Lelland. The pupils came back with suggestions for improving online information and suggested promotions to increase membership among young people.

Glasgow Caledonian University, although still in the middle of a project with first and second year pupils from Notre Dame secondary and Clydebank High, both in Glasgow, has already had to revise its approach.

The university wanted to know what it would take to convince young people of the value of studying engineering or computing with them. Many universities struggle to fill such courses, despite a proven demand from employers for graduates.

Again, pupils have told them to take a step back, suggesting that most young people would simply like more idea of what it is like to study at university at all. Now the course dean is looking into ways of providing would-be students with a more realistic taster of the subjects.

With the final conclusions still some weeks off, pupils from Notre Dame recently visited the university to gather more information. One question they asked - pertinently, for a team from a girls' school - was whether the courses appeal enough to their gender.

When I join them, Lauren Reilly, Hayleigh McCullagh, Melissa Ward and Rachael Rough, all 13, are confidently firing questions at undergraduates and postgraduates alike. "Why did you choose this course? Why don't you think girls do it? What do you dislike about it?"

There is a ripple of interest when one student reveals that there are no exams - his studies are all judged on coursework. The girls are also shown a room where design work is showcased, including bags, sculptures and computer scanners. "I thought engineering was just about cars," admits Lauren.

Later in the tour, you begin to predict some of the other likely reactions. The Notre Dame girls are ushered through a room that resembles TV's The IT Crowd, where four untrendy-looking young men sit around a cluttered table eating a lunch with a high junk factor. The room after that is filled with model cars made of balsa wood, driven by the springs from mousetraps.

"I think females undervalue what they can achieve," one staff member tells the group. But the girls seem unimpressed when another explains about training students to understand and counteract computer hacking.

Still, Space Unlimited's staff have warned against second-guessing their child consultants, all of whom are enthusiastic about the project. Lauren explains that, when they chose to get involved, they had little idea of what would be required of them. "We weren't allowed to know the question. A lot of people in the school say now they wish they'd done it. Sometimes young people have better ideas than adults," she adds.

"It's because we've got bigger imaginations" chips in Rachael, cheerfully.

Jackie Riley, director of international development in the computing department at Glasgow Caledonian, concedes the outcome is still unknown. "You don't know what the young people are going to come up with but you have to take that leap of faith and be confident they will come up with something."

Lelland says this hasn't been a problem for those companies that have gone before. "There hasn't been a single instance where a company has turned around and said, We have got nothing out of this.'"

But the hardest aspect for Space Unlimited is recruiting companies to take part - youth consultancy doesn't come cheap. Working with one school costs £10,000 per project - a lot to spend knowing you are not guaranteed a solution to your problem. "You do need someone in a company who is a risk taker, who thinks about ideas. Our difficulty is finding them."

There is also a need for teachers who "get it". Some do and some don't. But one thing holds true whatever the project, Lelland claims. "Success depends on the adults, not the young people."

Pupil power: big projects being solved by young minds