How can we present the innovation district's capabilities?

Caroline Wendt

Communicator, content manager, storytelling

Published

December 11, 2024

Categories

Business, trade & Industry

City of Lund

Co-Create

Innovation district

‍Many innovation districts have a wealth of statistics and measurement points to demonstrate their performance and to compare themselves with other areas. As far as Lund is concerned, there are some figures, but further efforts are needed to be able to show a complex picture of the innovation district in Lund. During a talk about the Lund Innovation District in November, Peter Kisch at Future by Lund and Martin Stankovski Clark at Lund University told about what is available, but also presented reflections on what is needed — for example, to make it easier for the actors in Lund to provide a common picture of the area.

In Lund there are many actors in a concentrated location, which often impresses visitors from outside. But how can one capture the complex picture of what is created jointly by Lund University, the place and the innovation ecosystem? Peter Kisch at Future by Lund pointed out three things that are important to capture during the conversation. It's the intensity, that is, how well we interact across organizational boundaries by cross-linking business, talent and organizations. It is also performance, which gives an idea of what comes out of the work done and ultimately also impact, that is, what impact and impact the work in the Lund Innovation District will have locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

A presentation of the Lund Innovation District.

To understand how to measure the three components, Peter Kisch showed examples taken from the United States.

- We in Lund need to do a benchmarking to measure ourselves against them. They are good at breaking down what they do into hard facts and we also need to address this from Lund's side,” says Peter Kisch.

When it comes to innovation intensity, there are a number of factors to consider, such as the proportion of companies involved in R&D, the size and density of innovation networks, and the depth of specialisation within the companies. It is also important to look at the capacity for cross-discipline and cross-linking across sectors, the capacity for collaboration and innovation investment. Finally, it's about creating a dense and teeming environment that people like to appear in.

In terms of performance, factors such as new products, services and processes, new patents/IP, trademarks, design, number of scientific articles and other R&D results contribute. Finally, there is the impact, which can be anything from whether knowledge and support jobs are created, how many innovation companies exist and which are started to how many established companies have been part of the innovation collaboration and what international impact the results have.

- By measuring impact, we can tell you how specialisation and cross-connections attract external interest and investment. It is good if we can put the spotlight on stellar scientists and key facilities that drive the district's impact,” says Peter Kisch.

To illustrate the material already available, Martin Stankovski Clark from Lund University based on some true statements that demonstrate the capacity within Lund's innovation district.

“In 2023, Lund University ranked fifth in Europe in terms of funding from the Horizon Europe programme.”

EU figures show that Sweden increased participation in 2023 compared to 2022 while some other countries went backwards. ^{! 1}

“Lund University ranks first among universities in the EU in terms of the number of startups filing patent applications linked to academia.”

In this study carried out by the European Patent Office (EPO), we have looked not only at patents directly linked to the university, but also to the extent to which the patentees are linked to universities, i.e. indirect patents. Sweden excels at individual academic patents.One reason for this may be the Lärarundantaget.^{! 2}

“In 1997 — 2021, the proportion of Lund University's research that has been relevant to patents was greater than that of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge during the same 25-year period.”

In this study, Lund University compared itself with many universities in the United States and Europe to see how relevant the research done is to patents. The survey shows how many of the university's publications are cited in patents over a 25-year period. The best was Imperial Collage in London with 6.4%, followed by Lund with the same share. The corresponding figures were 5.6% for Oxford and 5.8% for Cambridge.^{! 3}

“Without the Lund innovation district and its ecosystem, the region's innovation indices would be close to the worst in the country.”

A fourth survey, which Martin Stankovski Clark has looked at, is a regional innovation scoreboard that shows how prominent certain regions in Europe are in terms of innovation. It includes southern Sweden consisting of Skåne and Blekingen and the region places itself in an honorable fourteenth place in Europe. Martin Stankovski found out how the result was calculated based on different KPIs and then selected the Lund Innovation District from the overall picture. With this preliminary calculation, it turned out that Southern Sweden dropped from being the Innovation Leader to being in the group for moderate innovation areas. Lund University and Future by Lund are looking further at a more precise estimate of what contributes to the innovation index for the region.^{! 4}

In autumn 2024, Future by Lund conducted a survey using Parlametrics to understand how those operating in Lund think. It showed, among other things, that what is considered most important for a good innovation district is cooperation followed by the possibility of funding. (Read more)

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Source References

1) Compilation presented in Science Business news article 18th Jan 2024: https://sciencebusiness.net/news/horizon-europe/horizon-europe-2023-winners-and-losers-revealed

Based on aggregated data from the EU's “R&I project dashboard”.

https://www.datawrapper.de/_/q77f3/

https://dashboard.tech.ec.europa.eu/qs_digit_dashboard_mt/public/sense/app/d58f3864-d519-4f9f-855e-c34f9860acdd/sheet/KVdtQ/state/analysis

2) Yann Ménière et al., The role of European universities in patenting and innovation - A study of academic inventions at the EPO, European Patent Office, Munich, Germany, October 2024 http://epo.org/university-innovation-study

3) Source: Lund University based on data from www.scival.com collected 18th of April 2023

4) Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2023 from DG R&I

https://projects.research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/en/statistics/performance-indicators/european-innovation-scoreboard/eis-2024#/ris