IT’S THE MAGIC OF OPEN INNOVATION
On June 11 ACSELL had its first online Consortium Meeting with a great input from the Slovenia Healthcare Ecosystem. Key actors from the ecosystem presented themselves and questions centered around acceleration, education and innovation from different perspectives.
Healthday.si is a hub for digital innovation in healthcare which regularly organizes events for its members and relevant stakeholders, especially in connection with technology and innovation. Gregor Cuzak shared inputs about how they support innovative entrepreneurs, work in dialogue with regulators and encourage open communication through a platform. The important thing is to enable and create twinning between key stakeholders with the aim of raising competencies and cooperation.
Mojca Cvirn introduced us to the Start-up Ecosystem in Slovenia by presenting different programs of funding and support. The Ecosystem ‘works’ by promoting entrepreneurship through intricate consulting, coaching and incubating services for startups. And we also see here: cooperation, mutual support and (inter)national exchange is central to a functioning ecosystem.
In addition to sensitizing SMEs and political decision-makers towards the benefits of the Living Lab approach and identifying good practices in ACSELL partner regions in order to improve local innovation policies, one of the primary goals of ACSELL is to encourage inter- and transregional exchange and mutual learning. So this is definitely in synch with ACSELL activities.
Another interesting example is the Ljubljana University Incubator, which is one of the first start-up communities in Slovenia. Jakub Gajsek gave us a brief introduction to a selection of their activities in encouraging and supporting young entrepreneurs, for instance by providing access to experts in the EIT Health Network. A very important objective is also to raise entrepreneurial awareness in the spirit of entrepreneurial education and create an atmosphere of cooperation and knowledge transfer.
Igor Rogelj from ArrowFast – a company that sees its purpose in bringing medical devices to market faster – presented his activities in order to help MedTech startups en route to the market, especially by ensuring regulatory compliance. This is in general a long and daunting path, often the key barrier to market entry for many startups in the MedTech sector. ArrowFast concentrates on certification tasks of the device while the startup can continue to focus on the clinical quality assurance, on the business and the clients as early user-involvement can save resources.
To find a conclusion: You can see competitors everywhere. But when you look closely enough even your strongest competitor could be a valuable partner. This brings us back to the header and the magic of Open Innovation, which Henry W. Chesbrough also sees as the Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology.
