Case evenings - STUNS Life science

We need to play more jazz together

– Trust-based and outcome-oriented ecosystems for the digital and green transition

It is clear that through cooperation with others, we can reach new heights. We have long invested in clusters, science parks, and other network organizations, often geographically and/or thematically delimited. Through a variety of management forms and financing models, we have created a plethora of actors and meta-organizations that operate in the spheres of innovation.

If yesterday’s objective was to strengthen or take advantage of the strength in a sector, tomorrow’s should instead focus on what we need to achieve. Then the actors are not predetermined, and the target is flexible. Where yesterday, we wanted to invest in life science; today, we want to achieve health, and instead of focusing on vehicles, we are looking for mobility. With these objectives, a more comprehensive range of actors can contribute interdisciplinarily.

More and more people are talking about mission-driven innovation. Inspired by the joint approach of the 1960s to do everything necessary to put a man on the moon within a limited time, today, we instead talk about finding a sustainable energy supply or solving the challenges of the pandemic. Then we need to mobilize and engage outside our geography and established industry divisions, where boundaries are limitations.

We act today with an established and outdated view of creating economic growth through cooperation and need to take new steps.

Therefore, we must go from local/regional to global, limited to inclusive, support for individual actors to system transformation, short-term goals to a sustainable approach, limiting industry focus to societal value, and from collaboration to co-creation.

At STUNS, these topics are high on our agenda, and with the mission to make Uppsala a world-leading ecosystem for innovation, the mentioned transformation is necessary.