Our task
"Higher education institutions shall also conduct third stream activities and provide information about their activities, and also take actions to ensure that benefit is derived from research findings at the institution."
This quotation comes from the Swedish Higher Education Act, and means that issues of innovation should be a feature of both education and research. In 2009, the Ministry of Education and Research tasked Karolinska Institutet and seven other educational institutions with forming innovation offices.
The role of these innovation offices shall be to inspire, inform and encourage researchers to innovate. The aim is to contribute towards more ideas benefitting society.
Karolinska Institutet's Innovation Office began operating on 1 November 2010. There are also innovation offices at Uppsala University, Lund University, Umeå University, Linköping University, the Royal Institute of Technology and Chalmers University of Technology. Karlstad University, Växjö University, Örebro University and Mid Sweden University also have a joint innovation office called Fyrklövern.
The Innovation Office is jointly financed by the Ministry of Education and Research and Karolinska Institutet.
