Universities and Innovation

Many small biotechnology companies stem from academia, and that is true for Attana too. We formed Attana based on research from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, industrial experience from amongst others Scania, and the appreciation of the huge market potential. All through the start-up phase and establishment on the market, we have valued our connection to the university world. Our first customers were research scientists at Uppsala and Lund University who are not only customers but also contributed to the development of Attana, and we still consider it strategically important to keep collaborating with our customers, university researchers in particular, to stay on top and keep getting inspired.

When collaborating with universities many valuable contacts are established, sometimes across the world. For instance, our collaboration with the National University of Singapore has yielded skilled and hard working coworkers as well as invaluable contacts in Asia. The students get inspiration and experiences for their future endeavors, and we the opportunity to listen to their ideas and thereby maybe strengthen our own research and business ideas. From a pure business perspective, we also make sure that knowledge of our company is spread around the world as the students move on. When we need new coworkers, we already know several good people with a lot of knowledge of our company, and on top of that we have had the opportunity to work with them and see them in action. In fact, we are proud of having recruited many young people directly from universities, providing them with tough challenges and responsibility, and seen them grow into professionals contributing greatly to our success.

The students get hands-on experience, valuable contacts for the future and the chance to show what they are made of. Our university collaboration partners also benefit – their school gets more attractive as it has a strong connection to the industry and future job opportunities, and their research gets valuable market input that inspire new ideas, generating further groundbreaking discoveries.

So all in all, university collaborations are an example of a true win-win situation where all involved benefit greatly. They key to success is to understand each other’s ambitions and from that set clear goals on all sides.

Teodor Aastrup

CEO