Sponsored: This article is made in cooperation with Stibo Accelerator and Fonden for Entreprenørskab
Expert Panel:
How Do We Spawn More Succesful Startups From Universities? Everybody wants more successful, fast-growing startups to be built on top of the wealth of knowledge universities continuously generate. But how do we do that? And what will it mean to the established business community? We’ve asked four experts - including some of the partners making “From University to Unicorn” possible.
Jasmina Pless Chief Consultant for Entrepreneurship Policy at the Danish Chamber of Commerce
How do we transform research from universities into new, successful companies at an accelerated pace? In Denmark, the state spends 20 billion DKK on research annually. First and foremost, we need to bridge the gap between research environments and businesses to ensure, that research spendings also end up as commercial solutions. At the same time, we need to make it easier to extract patents from the universities in order to make them a part of commercial business plans. Danish universities are a breeding ground for numerous entrepreneurial ideas and startups. It just takes a long time. For that reason, the Danish Chamber of Commerce suggests a fast track solution for intellectual properties, which will change the current cumbersome and bureaucratic procedures in spinning out a company from a university. What will that mean to established businesses? It’s important to make it attractive for Danish growth companies to invest in research. This is the
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foundation for new solutions which contributes to making established companies more efficient and reducing their CO2 emission in a commercially sustainable way. Established companies from Denmark is constantly in an arms race with foreign companies which makes them reliant on innovation from research-heavy spinouts from the universities if they want to stay competitive. If we succeed in breeding innovative startups from Danish universities, this will automatically benefit the existing companies in Denmark. What is your role? The Danish Chamber of Commerce works toward making Denmark the best place to start a company in the world. In the spring, we published 28 recommendations to ensure the right conditions for Danish entrepreneurs. Several recommendations have been integrated into actual proposals from political parties.
From University To Unicorn
