Seeking contact with larger companies as part of your route to market? Know-how and financial support now available through ‘Industrial Partnerships’

In the life sciences, many small ventures with early-stage projects need to have a dialogue with larger companies as part of their business development process. The goal of such exchanges can be to gain industrial feedback on proposals/business ideas, to seek potential collaboration and funding, or to access large-company expertise and in-house resources, for example. All of which should lead to more prosperous development and a greater willingness to remain in Sweden!

To facilitate and minimise risks in these interactions, Uppsala BIO runs a programme called Industrial Partnership. This offers early projects/start-ups contact points to global companies and provides hands-on support and coaching during the dialogue itself. In addition, a limited amount of funding is available to cover costs associated with this process, e.g. patenting, regulatory, deal negotiation, legal, etc.

The overall aim is to develop a process where all innovation organisations cooperate on a national basis to assist SMEs in developing their ideas and growing into viable businesses. As well as creating greater wealth, these companies will be more likely to stay and prosper in Sweden, instead of being acquired by foreign companies early in their development.

To achieve a critical volume of projects, we need to look outside our own region. Since the project is supported by EU structural development funds via Tillväxtverket (The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth), we are collaborating with Innovation Offices and Incubators in East Central Sweden. Our collaborators are Uppsala University Innovation, SLU Holding, LiU Innovation Linköping, Uppsala Innovation Centre UIC, Create Incubator Västerås and Inkubera Örebro.

Industrial Partnershipis now under new project leadership via Magnus Engevik, newly-employed at Uppsala BIO. Magnus has an extensive life science background (Uppsala University and the Pharmacia group) as well as experience in managing innovation support and investments. “We must develop improved ways of channelling ideas from academia via small start-us in partnership with existing (large) companies to develop tomorrow’s solutions to today’s problems in the life sciences. And we must do this faster, cheaper and with better results than today”, says Magnus.

“An important part of Uppsala BIO’s future mission is to contribute on a national basis and, together with other players, to develop viable processes that help Swedish research groups and SMEs contact and meet with larger companies”, he continues. “Furthermore, it’s important that such interaction takes place on more equal terms than is often the case today. Here’s where Industrial Partnership has the chance to make a real contribution”.

“We know from experience that larger life science companies prefer to see Sweden as one single entity. If we divide our efforts into too small business/research co-operations, they may simply loose interest. Major enterprises need a large influx of companies and ideas in order to motivate spending their time, internal resources and investments. By counteracting such fragmentation and acting professionally on a national basis, we can help Swedish life science ventures prosper and remain in the country”.

Magnus recently visited Industrial Partnership project partners to discuss how to develop our efforts. “In Västerås, I sat down with Pär Börell of Västerås Science Park. That single meeting revealed several possibilities of how we could work better and resulted in a number of leads”.