1 of 15

Building a culture for student entrepreneurship at UiT

lars.ailo.bongo@uit.no

Lars Ailo Bongo�IFI & SFI VI�https://uit-dtil.github.io/

Innovation seminar, 30.08.22

2 of 15

Innovation lab (2021-2022) = me & Dominic

My innovation CV:

  • Innovation leader IFI
  • Innovation coordinator Visual Intelligence
  • NORA.startup steering group member
  • Co-founder Medsensio AS
  • Co-founder 3stepbio AS
  • 5 industry mentors
  • 4 industry master’s
  • 6 DofI’s ⇒ 2 license agreements
  • 1 Patent (application)

Dominic Riley:

  • The Grow Room (venture builder)
  • 20% position as industry mentor
    • Later increased to 50%

3 of 15

Traditional routes to commercialisation

FORNY

verification project

Licence

Startup

UiT

Research

TTO

Development

Market

Commercialisation

?

  • Technology immature or no protectable IP
  • Needs a team interested/financed to continue
  • No specific use cases or business concept

Student

startup

Missing at UiT:

  • Pre-commercial support
  • Culture for entrepreneurship among scientific staff
  • Student involvement (esp. tech students)

4 of 15

Students are the opportunity to create a greater impact from our tech innovation

Research innovative

technologies and ideas

Students interested in doing tech startups

+

Students do not need financing to work on student startup projects

5 of 15

6 of 15

Student entrepreneurship at NTNU

Inspiration and ideas

Evaluation and development

Startups

7 of 15

8 of 15

Student entrepreneurship at �OsloMet / Simula

9 of 15

Innovation leader help develop cases

Concept

Team

Validation

Prototype

Finance

Tech Startup

=

Sep

Jun

Mar

Dec

10 of 15

Innovation lab in a bigger context

Research

Students

Market

Know-how

Incubator

TTO

Investors

Customers

11 of 15

2021/2022 cases

Concept

Team

Validation

Prototype

Finance

Tech Startup

=

Sep

Jun

Mar

Dec

9

3

3 (7)

4

4

2022/�2023

2

12 of 15

Woid:

Ivanna Utsymenko (HHT?) & Mariel Ellingsen (IFI)

Abdera.ai:

Jonas Nordhaug Myhre (NORCE/ IFT), �Markus Tiller (IFI), Johannes Haugan Nilsen (HHT?) & Erland Grimstad (IFT)

13 of 15

Other activities

14 of 15

Scale-up: more cases and more labs

Same activity level

Bare minimum

Shut down?

  • We have funding for 2022/2023�(from NT & IFI)
  • We are not allowed to hire an innovation leader!
  • We have lost recruiting opportunity for this year
  • Culture clash
  • Is there interest at UiT?

LAB 3

Innovasjonleder

LAB 2

Innovasjonleder

Level 1

Studentinnovasjon leder

HHT - DT LAB

Design Thinking leder

IFI Lab

Innovasjonleder

Lab ...n

Innovasjonleder

15 of 15

Lessons learned

  • We have a concept
  • It works
  • Local enthusiasm (incl. funding and interested students)
  • Beauractical mess
  • Yet another short-lived innovation initiative at UiT?