Labs to Market – Building a Health Spinout Programme and Ecosystem
Slovenian science punches above its weight, producing a comparable number of publications per capita as the UK and more than Germany (source: SCIMAGO, 2022). Over 5000 researchers work at institutions in the Ljubljana region. Yet, there is no programme that would offer comprehensive support for scientists to spin out. Unsurprisingly, intelectual property (IP) commercialisation lags far behind the EU average. Ljubljana University Incubator (LUI) has started tackling this with our Labs to Market (L2M) programme in 2020 and 2021 and propose its continuation and expansion with this project. Labs to Market solves the challenge of spinout creation by matching entrepreneurial scientists and their breakthrough technologies with entrepreneurial co-founders to create future industry-defining companies.
- During the project’s first phase, we will create a community of open-minded scientists and entrepreneurial individuals together with our University TTO.
- In the second phase, we will match them into teams as future co-founders and they will begin to test their solutions on real-world challenges.
- In the third phase, teams will get further support from industry mentors from Cosylab d.d. The programme will run between March and November 2022 and we expect to engage at least 10 researchers in the 1st phase, include 5 projects in the 2nd and 3rd phases, and afterwards accept at least 1 in our regular startup incubation programme to help them secure funding and further support from EIT Health programmes, national funds, or venture capital.
Our overall goal is creating an ecosystem where scientists can create value from their knowledge and IP. Long-term, we will build on this community to create an environment where scientists see spinning out as a natural progression of their research.
EIT Health is supported by the European Instute of Innovaon and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them.