Past Projects at UBE

List of past projects at the Unit for Bioentrepreneurship.

EIT Health

EIT Health is one of the largest healthcare initiatives worldwide. Its goal is to sustainably advance the foundations of healthcare and thus promote the future conditions for healthier living and wellbeing of people across Europe while strengthening the European economy/business climate. UBE is involved in a number of projects within the EU consortium EIT Health.

In 2016 several projects were initiated within the framework of EIT Health where KI plays an active role.

Innovation Day

"If you can’t see it, you can’t be it"

The purpose with the Innovation Day is first of all to inspire and show students the possibilities with innovation and entrepreneurship. During one day, students from different study programmes experience working in interprofessional teams while following a structured method for problem solving to come up with solutions to societal challenges. In 2016 the full day event took place in Aula Medica. All KI students from the semester before their thesis work were invited to participate. In the morning, inspirational talks were held to get the students thinking and later, during lunch, the students mingled and formed teams for the practical work. In the afternoon the teams worked on challenges provided by external partners, assisted by coaches from the masters’ programme in bioentrepreneurship. The final result was filmed and at the end of the day, a jury presented the winning teams at an innovation pub where the actors of the innovation system was present (SSES among others).

GROWTH

Blended updated entrepreneurial education for high growth in life science

Growth of a start-up company into a high growth company in the Life Science and Health (LSH) sector requires experienced and well-equipped entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, the sector is confronted with a structural shortage which puts a strain on the sector’s innovation capacity. One of the identified roots of this problem is the current entrepreneurial education system. This Knowledge Alliance (KA) aims to:

  1. Strengthen entrepreneurial knowledge and skills for growth through innovation of teaching and learning methods on a European level, and
  2. Establish and intensify strategic learning and development of partnerships (public-private) in the field of LSH across Europe for exchange of knowledge

The first objective of this KA is to modernize the European educational system for higher education, by developing and implementing innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning. The programme is characterized by interactive and action oriented teaching and learning and will consist of four educational building blocks (combining online and face-to-face learning):

  1. Online modules (SPOCs)
  2. Entrepreneurial Labs
  3. Simulation Games
  4. Mix & Match events

The second objective is to cluster local LSH ecosystems in Europe via a platform, which enables the exchange, flow and co-creation of knowledge and expertise and provides LSH entrepreneurs with access to all relevant stakeholders, knowledge and resources.

The third objective is to provide transferable methods for entrepreneurship education for growth in other sectors. This project will connect the LSH ecosystems in Europe and provides the sector with the entrepreneurial knowledge and skills for GROWTH.

Toolbox

Welcome to the toolbox

Hi! This toolbox contains tools to awaken and stimulate your own and others creativity, find new perspectives and collaborate with others. The content and format has been shaped through many years of work entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial learning at UBE. The toolbox is a product of two recent projects: KI 2.0 and KI 2.1, both financially supported (partly) by Tillväxtverket (the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth). The KI 2.0 projects kicked off in 2011 and focused on implementing elements of entrepreneurship in the undergraduate programmes at Karolinska Institutet. The project ended in 2014. KI 2.1 was carried out between 2014 and 2015 and focused on continuing the implementation of entrepreneurship.

The text in the actual toolbox gives you more information about the process used to create the toolbox and content. Some tools were invented by us, some already exist. With the Design Thinking process as a starting point, you will find tools that will help you discover, define, develop and deliver ideas, results, products or perhaps services. We imagine that the user (that would be you), is a teacher, a student, perhaps a project manager, a researcher or maybe a PhD student. You might also be an administrator, a boss or something completely different. It doesn’t matter what you do or who you are. As long as you find the tools useful and helpful when generating new ideas, you are welcome to use them. Use the tools in a way that feels meaningful and creates value for you. You may copy, adapt, transform and change the material as long as you respect the Creative Commons license protecting it.

The material is not interactive in the sense that you can work in it online, but you can read the text or project it on a screen.

The toolbox is also available in Swedish: Verktygslåda för kreativitet, nya perspektiv och samarbete - UBE

Empowering PhD:s through entrepreneurship

With basic tools for innovation and enhanced entrepreneurial skills, doctoral students and young research group leaders will be empowered to take their research and future career to new possibilities.

Why

Doctoral students are trained to develop advanced knowledge and skills in their specific research field. At the same time, there is an increased demand on utilisation of research results. There is also a need for young researchers to develop their own career paths, even outside of academia.

What

The aim with this project is to raise interest and increase awareness of the potential with entrepreneurship and innovation in the doctoral education at Karolinska Institutet. The education should be developed for the doctoral students to be able to;

  • manage and develop their own research project with help of business tools,
  • increase the possibilities for utilization of research results, and
  • lay the foundation for a future career outside academia

This is Entrepreneurship

How

Based on action research and design thinking, the project is built up by four phases to 1) discover the need for entrepreneurship in the doctoral education, 2) define the focus of the project, 3) develop and prototype alternative solutions and finally 4) test and launch the result.

Results so far

From an online survey we know how the doctoral students look at their future career and what they think they need to get there. Based on the survey we have developed a prototype for a 2-hour interactive introduction module with the following main components:

Next step

Next step is to develop visual material to support the learning. A survey towards programme directors will also be developed and performed together with a number of focus groups.

For doctoral students who want to learn more, an elective course will also be developed and tested.

AB
Content reviewer:
21-12-2022