Ideon: a success story
Triple Helix in Swedish
Dmitry Mindich, "Expert" No. 35-2011
The oldest Swedish technopark Ideon managed to create 10 thousand jobs in high-tech business. This became possible thanks to the reorientation of a strong university to the needs of the market, ensuring access of start-up enterprises to cheap money and high-quality consulting.If we compare the success stories of the largest innovation centers of the Old World, we can note one thing in common: they all did not arise from a good life.
This observation is fully confirmed by the history of Ideon – the oldest and largest technopark in Sweden, which is located in the south of the country in the city of Lund (province of Skåne). Sweden was one of the first in Europe to feel the effects of the economic boom in Southeast Asia and the beginning of the deindustrialization of Europe. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the shipyards in Malmo - the largest industrial enterprises in Skåne – began to lose the market under the onslaught of competitors from South Korea. Many of them were closed. The province is facing massive unemployment.
In 1983, a team of young scientists from Lund University, one of the two largest universities in Sweden, led by Professor of chemistry Sven-Tor Holm, proposed to the university administration, the Municipality of Lund and the Governor of Skåne to build a technopark in the city that could help create new jobs in knowledge-intensive industries. If such a proposal had been made five years earlier, Dr. Holm would have been dismissed as an irresponsible searchlight. There are more than three thousand technoparks operating in the world today, and then there were only eight of them. In Scandinavia, they did not exist at all – technoparks were only talked about in the university environment, and even then rarely. But the crisis forced the heads of the university and the authorities of the region to take a non–standard step - and in September 1983 the foundation of the first building of the technopark was laid, and a few months later the first two start-up pharmaceutical companies became its residents.
Today, the results of Ideon impress even skeptics: in the 28 years since its opening, more than 10 thousand jobs have been created here in high-tech companies. 280 companies with 3 thousand employees are located here.
Only 15% of them specialize in consulting and service. The rest are companies implementing projects in the field of ICT, pharmaceuticals, biotechnologies and "green" technologies. Three years after its creation, more than 80% of high-tech startups survive here, whereas on average in Western Europe, 60% is considered a good indicator. "It should be borne in mind that one new high–tech workplace creates three jobs in the service industries – consulting, taxi, restaurants, and so on," says Sven-Tor Holm.
Today, the founders of Ideon explain the success of their brainchild by a combination of favorable circumstances. Thanks to the successful start, as well as the fact that this was the first experience of creating a technopark in Scandinavia, Ideon quickly managed to create a strong brand that attracts both new projects and investors. "The Ideon brand makes life much easier for our residents. The CEO of the company created yesterday can easily call the heads of Ericsson and say: hello, they are bothering from the Ideon company," says Sven–Tor Holm. The structure of the owners of the technopark's property has practically not changed over the entire time of its existence, thanks to which Ideon managed to create a stable and efficient management system (only 12 employees work in the management company, since many functions have been outsourced). The example of Ideon quickly convinced Swedish politicians of the effectiveness of technoparks for the development of the national economy, thanks to which a state-funded system of support for innovative business was created in the country. Today, the technopark uses this system one hundred percent.
However, the constant support from the state, the university and large private business and interaction with them was crucial for the success of Ideon – the "triple helix", which is much talked about today as a necessary condition for the effective operation of the innovation system. However, when Ideon was created, this term had not yet been put into circulation, and the "triple helix in Swedish" itself has a number of unique features that, in fact, ensure its effectiveness.
Technopark of Culture and recreationThe fact that the university has played a decisive role in the development of both Lund and the Ideon Technopark is evident as soon as you enter the city.
There are 40 thousand students per 100 thousand permanent residents of Lund. Actually, it is impossible to determine exactly where the city ends and the university campus begins – the first university buildings are located a hundred meters from the ancient Romanesque cathedral located in the very center, and then the university buildings extend further to the northeast, occupying about a quarter of the city territory. Ideon is located on the other side of a narrow street from the buildings of the University School of Economics, Technological University, Chemical Center, Environmental Center and Biomedical Center. Today, among the residents of Ideon, it is almost impossible to find a company that would not be associated with the university – origin, employees or business contacts.
Although the university stood at the origins of the technopark, the university leadership has never sought to actively participate in the management of the Ideon, and even more so to enter into any property relations with it. The university saw any obligations assumed as a threat to its own autonomy. Only once, in the early 1990s, the university was forced to compromise its principles, when another crisis affecting the Swedish financial system and the real estate market led to the bankruptcy of the real estate development company Ideon. The plan developed by the authorities of Skone together with the largest regional bank for the rescue of Ideon provided that the university would receive a preferential loan for the purchase of the technopark's property and a share in its management company. However, at the first opportunity, the university parted with these assets – in 2006, its share was sold to the development company Wihlborgs Fastigheter AB.
The relations between Ideon resident companies and the university professorship have played an incomparably more important role. On the one hand, professors often work by order of technopark residents, which is not surprising, since many of Ideon's projects originated within the walls of the university. On the other hand, the leading specialists of the R&D departments of the technopark residents and the nearby laboratories of the high-tech giants are regularly involved in teaching at the university. It is important that we are usually talking about personal informal contacts, which would be impossible if the technopark and research units of large companies were not within walking distance from the university.
The commercialization of university developments is greatly facilitated by the fact that, according to Swedish law, the intellectual property created with budgetary funds belongs entirely to the researcher,
and not to the university or the state. "Our neighbors from Denmark decided some time ago to change this system and made the state the copyright holder. The reform turned out to be destructive for their innovation system. Universities have no idea how to turn their developments into money," says Sven–Tor Holm.
The Science of sellingOver the 28 years of the technopark's existence, the importance of the university as a source of new business ideas and personnel for projects coming to the technopark has increased markedly.
Since the 1980s, the Swedish government has been consistently implementing a course to transform universities from purely research into entrepreneurial ones. "In order to form a constant flow of projects, a system of purely practical entrepreneurial education has been created in all universities of the country. Students are not taught about entrepreneurship, they are taught to be entrepreneurs. To launch such programs, it was necessary to attract many people with practical experience from the outside as teachers. At first, these courses were taught by professors, but who needed it?" says Sven–Tor Holm.
Today, Swedish universities receive budget funding to perform three equivalent functions: teaching students, conducting research and disseminating knowledge. The latter task involves not only and not so much the popularization of scientific knowledge as their commercialization. Therefore, the number of university developments put on the market directly affects the amount of funding received by the university from the state budget. All this forced Lund University to create its own development commercialization system, which includes a technology transfer office, structures that provide advisory support to start-up projects, as well as its own business incubator, which operates under the wing of Ideon.
At Lund University, the links between natural sciences departments and large corporations have always been strong. However, the university management tried to find opportunities for developing ties with small enterprises, as well as for the commercialization of knowledge, even in those areas of research where it would seem impossible in principle.
"In fact, this approach has never been traditional for Swedish universities, just like for Russians," says Sven–Tor Holm. – Working with small businesses, you will never make an academic career. They don't invest in long-term research. They need a product today, let them use yesterday's technologies for this. Such enterprises can use almost any knowledge, but the problem is that they, as a rule, do not know what the university can offer them."
To solve this problem, Lund University has launched the "Hiring Expert" program. "The program covered all faculties, including humanities. And when you ask university employees if they have anything they could sell, people often answer: this is interesting, no one has ever asked us anything like this, now we understand that what we are doing has economic value," says Dr. Holm.
For example, Sven-Tor Holm gives an example, as a result of the upcoming expansion of the Ideon, the territory of one of the villages adjacent to the city will be affected. "I asked the management of the development company that is engaged in this project: what do you know about this village? They said: we only know what we are going to build on this place. Then I came to the history department and asked them the same thing. They replied, “We know everything about this village. We have photos of its inhabitants since the 1880s, we have recipes of dishes that were then cooked in it, we have recorded oral histories about many of its inhabitants. We know all about the history of agriculture, villages and farms in this region.” And when I told all this to the developer, they told me: “We would like to order them a book about this village,” says Sven–Tor Holm. - In addition, the history department has recordings of folk songs made in the 1920s not on film, but also on wire. They digitized them and made them ringtones for mobile phones, which are in great demand."
How to establish a connection with EricssonNo less significant role in the fate of Ideon was played by a large private business.
To begin with, the technopark might not have existed if in 1983 the project team and the regional authorities had not convinced IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad to join the board of directors of Ideon and invest 1 billion kronor in it. Today, the Kamprad family, through the IKANO group, owns one of two development companies, which, in fact, own the real estate of the technopark and its management company.
Technopark is literally an intermediate link between the university and large corporations. Its buildings are surrounded by university buildings from the west and south, and from the east and north by R&D centers of AstraZeneca, Garbor, Ericsson, Tetra Pak and a dozen other smaller companies.
The reputation of the university and the initiative of local authorities were crucial for attracting the R&D departments of high-tech corporations to Lund. In this respect, the history of SonyEricsson is indicative. In the early 1980s, Ericsson did not consider mobile communications as a priority area of business development, so the team of 16 specialists involved in these developments became a separate research group. The Governor of Scone and the founders of Ideon convinced corporate bosses to place it in the newly created technopark.
From the point of view of large Russian companies, this decision by Ericsson was pure charity. The company not only did not receive any benefits, but also agreed to pay 20% more than the standard market rate for rent. "We needed money to invest, as well as to support start–up companies that had little funds," says Professor Holm. In addition, the company installed a switchboard in the technopark at its own expense, so that Ideon received a free telephone connection. "Ericsson understood that they are a large corporation and therefore bear a certain responsibility. This is a feature of the mentality of our big business," Sven–Thorn Holm explains such generosity.
The history of the partnership between Ideon and Ericsson had a happy continuation: in the 1980s and 1990s, the research group that moved to Lund, consisting of a handful of employees, grew into a huge R&D division specializing in the development of software and equipment for cellular communications. Today Ericsson and its joint venture with Sony are one of the largest employers for graduates of Lund University, as well as the locomotive for the development of ICT projects in Ideon. A significant proportion of ICT companies operating in Ideon are either themselves "daughters" of the telecommunications giant, or participate in joint developments with it. So, in particular, the Bluetooth wireless communication standard used all over the world appeared.
The same can be said about biotechnologies and pharmaceuticals – to a large extent their development in the Lund Technopark was due to the presence of R&D centers of pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Pharmacia in the city. Today, Active Biotech, a company that has separated from Pharmacia after its takeover by Pfizer, which specializes in the development of drugs in the field of oncology and immunology, operates in Lund. In turn, large pharmaceutical corporations are attracted by the availability of skilled labor, as well as proximity to powerful university research centers in the field of medicine, biology and chemistry. In particular, Lund is home to the country's largest university clinic and the University Biomedical Center, which employs more than 700 researchers. In addition, an additional incentive was the successful operation of the technopark and the system of commercialization of scientific developments created around it.
Hypermarket of servicesIf we talk exclusively about the support tools available to companies located in the Lund Technopark, then there is nothing unique about them.
These are business incubators that provide offices, laboratories and business management and development services to start-up innovative companies, a business training system for such projects, a network of financial support institutions. At the early stages of development, projects attract mainly state grants, at the growth stage private investments begin to play the first fiddle. In general, everything is like everyone else's – they are trying to organize a project support system in most innovation centers of the world, including Russian ones, according to about the same scheme.
Another thing is striking – the density of the network of organizations created inside and around Ideon, engaged in supporting start-up technological enterprises. At first glance, it may even seem redundant. Ideon can be compared to a hypermarket of service and financial services, where any start-up company will be able to find a suitable support program for it.
Let's start with business incubators and business development services. In addition to two business incubators created by the technopark itself - Ideon Innovation and a specialized incubator for biotechnology projects Ideon Bioincubator – the student business incubator VentureLab, which is funded by the university, also operates in the structure of the technopark. Non-governmental non-profit organizations working in Ideon, uniting large businesses and municipalities, deserve special attention. Such organizations exist in many developed countries, but perhaps nowhere do they play such a significant role as in Sweden.
Thus, the LIFT business incubator, established by the Lund Entrepreneurship Support Center, operates under the wing of the technopark. There are such centers in 200 out of 290 municipalities in Sweden, and they were created not by the state, but on the initiative of the NGO "Society and Workplaces", established in the mid-1980s by former Volvo top managers. Half of the organization's budget is formed from voluntary contributions from large businesses, the other half is contributed by municipalities and business associations. The main task of the organization is the development of entrepreneurship in Sweden and the solution of employment problems. During its existence, "Society and Workplaces" has assisted in the opening of more than 190 thousand small enterprises.
Another organization of this kind is CONNECT. She helps technological enterprises being created in Scone in the development of a business plan and "packaging" of the project, organizes meetings with investors (both with large companies and private venture capitalists), and also provides legal, audit and consulting services. And it's all free. The CONNECT network unites all the largest municipalities and universities of Skåne, as well as large industrial and service companies and banks present in the region, including Volvo, AstraZeneca, Preab, Swedbank.
Innovative guardianshipPerhaps one of the key know-how of Swedish business incubators is the system of personal mentoring.
Each project that has become a resident of the business incubator receives a personal mentor who, in the mode of daily communication, helps aspiring entrepreneurs in developing marketing strategies, company management systems, and intellectual property management strategies. Moreover, working with a mentor is a prerequisite for placing the project in an incubator. Trainers are provided to residents of business incubators by several organizations at once: the state company Teknopol, the university technology transfer office LU Innovation, the above-mentioned CONNECT. With rare exceptions, the services of business coaches are subsidized by the state or public organizations, so residents of Ideon receive them for free.
"It's not so easy to recruit so many good business coaches. Basically, these are people who have worked for twenty or thirty years in large companies, for example in Tetra Pak or Ericcson, who are tired of such work. They are interested in working with young people and young companies. Often these same trainers act as business angels, that is, they invest their own money in the projects they supervise," says Thomas Meller, CEO of the Ideon management company.
As a rule, trainers work on a permanent basis, however, if necessary, third-party consultants are also involved. This is an attractive job – business coaches receive salaries and fees comparable to salaries in private business. "The number of consultants and trainers is solely a matter of money. It all depends on the government's understanding that the successful launch of business incubator projects requires certain costs," says Sven-Tor Holm.
The network of institutions operating in Ideon, engaged in financial support and investment in innovative projects, is no less diverse. At the earliest stage, when we are talking only about a promising idea, the project can apply for state or university grants, as well as special grants to "test" the idea. Further, to open a business, the project team can apply for a so-called conditional repayment loan of up to 5 thousand Swedish kronor, which is allocated by the state agency for support of innovative entrepreneurship Innovationbron ("Innovation Bridge"). If a startup gets back on its feet, it returns the loan with a small percentage. If a newborn enterprise fails and is liquidated, it does not return anything, while no sanctions are imposed on the project team. According to Thomas Moeller, more than 80% of recipient companies have repaid loans in full during the implementation of this program.
Often, already at the startup stage, private investors – business angels - enter projects. According to Thomas Moeller, today only Swedish investors invest in Ideon's projects – as a rule, these are either retired top managers of large corporations, or managers of successful projects who have already left the technopark and set off on a free voyage.
At the seed stage, private venture funds working with Ideon are connected, the largest of them are Lumitec and Teknoseed (specializing in seed and venture investments in projects of universities in the region). In addition, funds from Denmark and Norway work in Lund.
"If we are not talking about the East and West coasts of the United States, there is a shortage of private investment in innovative projects everywhere," says Sven–Tor Holm. "In Sweden, money can only be obtained here, in Lund, or in Stockholm. However, in Lund, the task is made easier by the fact that it is a small town in which many events take place. People meet all the time, talk about the research they are doing, about the investments they have made. Therefore, I started the creation of the Teknoseed seed fund by looking at the list of the largest taxpayers in the city – you can request it from the tax services. Then we sent a proposal to the richest residents of Lund: do they want to invest in a seed fund and thereby help the development of their city? I didn't expect 550 people to say yes. We told them about the fund's strategy – and they liked it. They invested not so much – about a thousand euros each. I am a member of the board of directors of the foundation, and it is headed by Governor Skone. The only problem is that it is now difficult for me to ride a bike for shopping: investors are constantly stopping to find out what I think about this or that issue."
Finally, companies that have entered the growth stage can apply for investments from the funds of the state investment fund.
The support institutes working in the technopark regularly arrange meetings of project managers with investors. Such presentations are called "springboards", and only projects that business coaches have already worked with are allowed to attend them. "We can talk about both the competition of projects for private investment and the competition of investors for good projects. It all depends on the current state of a particular industry. In good times, investors call me, in bad times I sit down and start calling investors. These are good times for ICT, Internet projects and "green" technologies, and difficult times for medical and biotechnologies, especially for drug developers," says Thomas Moeller.
Ecosystem versus HierarchyPerhaps the most surprising thing, from the point of view of a Russian manager or official, is that this complex network of support institutions with similar tasks and different responsibilities is not coordinated by anyone from above and at the same time works as a well-coordinated mechanism.
The fact is that it was formed gradually and without any clear plan - the technopark was overgrown with more and more new state, municipal and public institutions to support innovative business, as the state and big business became more and more convinced of the need for such support. Moreover, some national-level institutions, such as the government agency Innovationbron, originated in Lund. The prototype of the "Innovation Bridge" was created in Skåne by the founder of Ideon Sven-Tor Holm and at first operated on a regional scale. In the mid-1990s, his achievements formed the basis of a nationwide platform to support the commercialization of knowledge.
"At the beginning of his journey, Ideon acted alone. Today, I cannot name any one person or organization who would be in charge and responsible for everything," says Thomas Moeller. – This is a kind of ecosystem that regulates itself. We all depend on each other, that's why it works."
Anna Nikiforova took part in the preparation of the article.Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru