Technology collage

Aalborg Universitet

ESA BIC & OE - Business Unit Manager at Aalborg University at Aalborg University

North Jutland, Denmark

ESA BIC Denmark is the 21st member of ESA’s pan-European network of Business Incubation Centres. The incubator is lead by The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in collaboration with the Danish Ministry for Higher Education and Science, University of Aalborg, University of Aarhus, The Danish Industry Foundation and other partners from academia, science parks, industry and Danish government agencies.

The main objective of the Danish ESA BIC is to create and strengthen communities of successful space related start-ups in Denmark by supporting 40 start-ups during the period of 2020-24. The activities will contribute significantly to growing clusters of space-based companies in Denmark.

ESA BIC Denmark

ESA BIC - Business Unit Manager

Open Entrepreneurship is a Danish initiative aiming to be a world leading technology commercialization community to benefit the society.

In Denmark, we have excellent and leading researchers, but how can their knowledge and efforts benefit the society? Studies have shown that matching research teams with experienced and external entrepreneurs creates more sustainable businesses. This commercialization catalyzes the research and knowledge into products or processes that generates value to the society.

We will capture the value through an action-oriented approach by connecting experienced entrepreneurs with researchers very early on to explore commercial and innovative opportunities. These can either be entrepreneurial (spinout or startup company) or intrapreneurial (within the university, company or organization).

This way, the research team has a much deeper understanding of their options, which helps the existing commercial ecosystem on the universities i.e. tech transfer units and business development units. By doing so, Open Entrepreneurship will expand and further develop the existing ecosystem into a technology commercialization community. All methods used in Open Entrepreneurship are research based and recognized.

Open Entrepreneurship is a collaborative initiative: Danish partner universities are Aalborg University, Aarhus University, IT University of Copenhagen & Technical University of Denmark. Californian UC Berkeley is the strategic partner. Open Entrepreneurship has received DKK 35 million from Industriens Fond. Together we utilize our extensive networks to build bridges between industry, universities, sectors and national borders.

Gert Spender