Education seen as centre of innovation collaborations
Innovation
Closer external collaboration and development of competence were two of the themes recurring yesterday during the European Commission’s conference on the Entrepreneurial University, hosted by KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The conference continues on March 20.
KTH Vice President Margareta Bergendahl was one of the panelists who presented their perspective on what role the universities of Europe must play to drive economic growth and solve society’s increasingly complex problems. She drew on KTH’s own experience with strategic partnerships with some of the leading Swedish multinational companies, such as Ericsson, Scania and Sandvik.
And she gave the audience an overview of how OpenLab trains students to take on the challenges of the future.
The event, PISI 2014 (Partnerships for Innovation and Socio-Economic Impact: the Entrepreneurial University), was organised by the European Commission, in partnership with KTH. A packed auditorium included people from business, innovation organisations, universities and governments across Europe. The purpose behind the Business Thematic Forum was to explore how cross-sector and international partnerships can contribute to the development of innovation and strengthen economic growth in Europe.
Bergendahl explained how KTH leaders meet with the leaders of their strategic partner companies and focus on how to deliver competence. “These companies are global; still we had a vision to be a good competence provider for the companies that want to stay in Sweden as well as those that are considering locating in Sweden,” she said.
The university and its partners work closely on education and research, she said.
“We have a large number of professors and specialists from those companies engaged with really a long term impact on almost everything we do,” Bergendahl said. The university has gained learnings and experience in how long-term partnerships should work, but she added that it is resource-demanding and cannot be done with all companies.
Bergendahl also explained how KTH works in partnership with city and regional governments in Stockholm to establish an innovative ecosystem, which in her view is to “look upon education as the motor in the system to deliver innovative outcomes ... That’s not necessarily startups patents or companies but to do innovative things in other parts of the society” including mature companies and in social organizations.
“This is about capacity building and how to learn from experience, but also to understand that to implement innovativeness the most effective way to do that is with the young people,” Bergendahl said.
The conference also featured business perspectives. Sara Mazur, Head of Ericsson Research. A KTH alumnus who holds 69 patents herself, recounted how Ericsson created four generations of the GSM mobile broadband technology standard – 2G, 3G and 4G – by focusing heavily on innovation.
Mazur credits Ericsson’s investment in R&D – 14 percent of the company’s revenue goes toward R&D, and 80 percent of it is devoted to software. Cooperation with universities around the world, including KTH, enables Ericsson to draw on the best talent and retain its technology leadership, she said.
“For us, innovation never stops,” Mazur says. "We have been around for more than 135 years. The reason we are still here is because we are innovative."
She said the future brings untold changes in what the company refers to as “the Networked Society.”
“Our technologies will be used not just for communications but for mission-critical, business-critical and society-critical applications.
Mazur advised the audience to “keep the quality level high on the basic levels of education, math, physics and technology,” and to cooperate with companies all through society to make sure that research is relevant to society.
David Callahan