Interview with Mats Nordqvist, head of Business Innovation

What is your role as the head of Business Innovation

- My role is to participate to create contact and inform companies about Smart Textiles. There are different methods to get in contact with companies. It is important that I reach out myself as well as arranging seminars/workshops. However, more and more companies contact Smart Textiles themselves since the Vinnova founding. We gained a lot of PR thanks to this and companies out there heard about us, which has led to exciting projects we never had thought about it before.

- My role is also to help companies develop a foundation to a project application when they have an idea. Since a lot of them are not use to create project plans, I also help them with this part. After that, I report the project plan to the commission who review the plan and makes sure it fulfills the set requirements. Finally yet importantly, the plan reaches the executives who make a decision whether the project will be executed or not. During the working process, I am responsible to make sure there is a high level of secrecy.

- The foundation smart Textiles is this that the demand from the companies should be matched together with research competence. To get R&D activities that leads to concrete products for the companies' market going.

Tell us about an interesting project.

- Many interesting projects are going on within waste handling and recycling of materials from electronic products, where the material can be recycled for textile applications. Also, the filter industry where many textile materials are used are up and running and working intensively to raise the standard through development of conductive fiber. The filter industry will get an increasing use of this, especially since many hospitals have high demand on the indoor airflow. If we are able to solve the problem with conductive fiber and polymers, there are tremendous applications and possibilities for this.

- We are open for companies' wishes and already have projects running with electronic companies as well as life science companies and the vehicle and aviation industry.

What is the goal for Business Innovation?

- The formal goals are to have, within three years (started July 1, 2008), 15 new companies and 25 projects up and running. Right at this moment there are 13 new projects going on. We also hope for ten new products on the market.

- The absolute and main goal is to manage to get the companies to see Smart Textiles as a natural partner; to be the obvious contact for research purpose. There is no previous research tradition within the textile industry, nor cooperation with the academy. This is something we want to change and make it easier for the companies to pursue R&D.

How do you contribute to increased growth in the region?

- This is the core for our activity. To start up collaborations that produce new products. We are working in a fairly short perspective in a R&D context, 3-5 years, since the companies already have a product idea. This saves a lot of time. We work closely with ESPIRA, a business incubator whose job is to capture new entrepreneurs. It is crucial to start up new companies to create new job opportunities.

How do you cooperate with the other labs?

- This is still under development and we are working to see what ways of collaborations there are. Joint workshops are one example.

What is your future view for Business Innovation?

- I hope that we within the near future will see products out on the market so that we can show even more companies the opportunities that are here for them. I also hope that we can find more ways of collaborations between the labs.

Text: Therese Rosenblad
Photo: Annika Hellström