A year of test beds, portfolios and projects — Future by Lunds 2023
For ten years, the innovation platform Future by Lund was run as a Vinnova-funded project with Lund Municipality as the principal. The goal at its inception in 2012 was, among other things, to create a permanent business, and in January 2023 Future by Lund was transformed into an economic association, founded by, among others, Lund Municipality and Lund University. As before, Future by Lund is an arena for collaboration between universities, municipalities and industry to increase the capacity and ability of Lund's innovation ecosystem to be able to make large joint ventures. In the new economic association there are Lund Municipality, Lund University and Lund's business community represented. So in the past year much has continued as before, but the year has also meant a development of the business with many new and exciting elements.
New members: At the start of the association for the end of 2022/23, there were eleven members: Trivector Traffic, Sensative, Fashion Innovation Center, Acconeer, AFRY, LKF, XPlot, RISE, Village Development, Lund Municipality and Lund University. Over the past year we have gained 26 more members: WIN, Medicon Village Fasendom, I Love Lund, Granitor, Ideon, Siemens, Alfa Laval, Handelsbanken, Olivearte, Innovation Skåne, Kommunledningsakademin, E.ON, Sparbanken, SEB, Kraftringen, Adesso, Via Europa, Cirkus Syd, Mitt Väggval, Vati of Sverige AB, Mitt Logik Group, ESS, Smile, Mannheimer & Swartling law firm, Nearby factory and Mobile Heights.
More employees and a board of directors: At the start of the year, there were four employees in the association with Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth as CEO of Future by Lund and Peter Kisch as Director of Operations. During the year, more employees have been integrated into the business, so that when 2024 begins, there will be a total of six working in the association, another four-six who work with us through Lund University's initiative and some affiliates. The Chairman of the Board is Per Eriksson, former Rector of Lund University and former Director General of Vinnova. The Board consists of representatives from Lund Municipality, Lund University and the business community in Lund.
Lund innovation district: Many cities in the world are strategically working on developing innovation districts. This work is done to find solutions to the great challenges of our time in a dynamic society, where the proximity and the possibility of collaboration between different knowledge-dense activities are taken into account. In Lund, there are great opportunities for an innovation district that can both deliver the sustainable solutions of the future and attract talent and more companies. During the year, the strategic work to create an innovation district in Lund has intensified. A steering group consisting of Anders Almgren, Chairman of the Municipal Board of Lund Municipality; Kristina Eneroth, Vice Rector at Lund University; and Pia Kinhult, Head of Host State Relations at ESS was formed and Future by Lund was assigned the task of leading the co-creation of the Lund Innovation District.
Work has begun on locating key themes and creating relevant working groups with representatives from the various activities. During the year, three events were held with discussions about what is special about the Lund Innovation District and what it could be developed into in the future.
At that first arrangement People from business, organisations, municipalities and universities gathered to discuss Lund's future opportunities under the leadership of Kristina Eneroth, Pia Kinhult and Anders Almgren. There was great interest in both this event and in continuing discussion.
During EU Days Lund 2023 brought together some of the major companies for a discussion on how Lund can work with talent, funding and collaboration to continue driving innovation and growth in the region and to strengthen the Lund Innovation District as an important place in the global innovation landscape.
Test beds, incubators, research labs, maker spaces — all are examples of infrastructure that can be suitable for innovation. In Lund there are nearly fifty such creative and often deeply specialized places. During Lund EU Days, representatives of the Humanist Laboratory, DarkLab, SMiLE Incubator AB, Biotech Heights and Lund NanoLab participated in a panel discussion on Lund Innovation District.
Membership in GIID: As part of work on an innovation district, Future by Lund and Lund Innovation District have joined GIID, The Global Institute on Innovation Districts. This gives Lund opportunities for collaboration with other innovation districts, access to international knowledge and data, common resources for reports and international visibility.
Survey of the innovation district with AI: As an innovation district is being shaped by all those present in the area, a survey of over 500 people via a survey. The analysis is done with the help of Parlametric, a Lund-based company that, with a combination of proprietary AI technology and the expertise of human analysts, transforms qualitative data into directly useful statistics. The results of the survey are expected to be ready around the end of 2023/24.
Theoretical work: During its ten years as an innovation platform, Future by Lund has explored and built methodologies, knowledge and capabilities in the field of smart and sustainable cities. The organizations that are members of the association have worked together to create common solutions to societal challenges in areas where no organization has its own mandate. To clarify and explain work was first picked “The Zone Model” front. Gradually, a unifying model for how to follow the development of a whole system of innovation actors emerged. Led by Future by Lund's associate researcher Emily Wise, Future by Lund and Lund University have developed the Liept model, which is a model for tracking movements in an innovation ecosystem. With the help of the model, it is possible, among other things, to track which events were important in creating change and what effects public investments can have within an ecosystem. In May 2023, Emily Wise and Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth presented a publication on the model at the 2023 UIIN (University Industry Innovation Network) global conference in Budapest.
The Liept model also includes a systematic work with a portfolio. The theoretical work and models form the basis for the further work in Future by Lund and constitute and will form a basis in several projects.
ekip and KKN: Together with Lund University, Future by Lund has made an extensive investment in the work with the Cultural and Creative Industries (KKN). An application to the Knowledge Innovation Community (KIC) initiative mobilised stakeholders in the field and led to the European Commission's decision to provide support for team, European Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Policy Platform, an innovation policy project within KKN, with Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth as project manager.
When Spain took over the Presidency of the European Union in July, cultural and creative industries were one of their top priorities, and this made Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth was one of the keynote speakers during the opening ceremony in Barcelona.
Project ekip started in June by the fact that the participating European organizations were in Lund for a kick off.
In connection with this kickoff, we also arranged innovation forum Unexpected at the dairy. During a packed day, some of Lund University's innovation areas in cultural and creative industries were presented, while discussions on how to create internationally connected and inclusive innovation ecosystems were highlighted. The Forum attracted more than 200 people from all over Europe.
KKN's work has been structured in six innovation portfolios: Transforming the Fashion and Textile Industry, The personal experience of digital concerts, the realization of human rights, Existential sustainability, Biosphere candidature Stor and Archaeology & New Technology. The portfolios in the different areas have all developed over the year. In some portfolios, the foundation has been laid for future projects, such as the Fashion @LU research network has been formed in the textile field and for another portfolio it has worked on Connecting human rights with mobility started.
Studies and work: In a pilot project, Future by Lund is working together with Mitt Vägval and Lund Municipality with My Weigh Platforml, a meeting place focused on jobs and education where young people, parents and career counsellors can find jobs and trainings, as well as meet companies, municipalities and regions. Work is now underway to strengthen the content of the platform through some initial presentations of professions and workplaces for the upcoming workers.
Biotech Heights: In the fall came two big news in the field of biotechnology. First, Lund University and Tetra Pak launched the joint venture Biotech Heights. Lund has thus gained a research hub where bioprocess technology can be used to drive innovations in sustainable food and material production. At Kemicentrum there are high-quality laboratories and Tetra Pak's premises offer ample opportunities for large-scale production. In the autumn, funding from Vinnova for the innovation platform was also completed to develop new bioprocess technologies, such as fermentation. From the start, this collaboration includes Future by Lund together with Tetra Pak and Lund University.
Digitization: Over the years, Future by Lund has run several major projects within digitalisation, and when the business moved to the financial association at the turn of the year, the two projects LOSC and FLOW also moved with them. Lund Open Sensing City is a project that aims to create an open testbed for the future real-time controlled society and the FLOW project intends to investigate how to collect data using sensor technology and then connect the data together on a digital platform. Since both projects have been linked together to reinforce each other, and have also built on the test bed created in the previous SOM project, Smart Public Environments. In 2023, we will work on several ways to measure traffic, such as through radar and image sensors in the roundabout at Brunnshög and sensors to measure flows of tram passengers in Lund. A test station is being created in Veberöd with the help of Lund Municipality's new system for powering lampposts, and a lamppost becomes the starting point for several measurements of traffic and transport. This is also a test for a model for how Lund Municipality can offer operators places for connected sensors in the future.
In June, the big one was launched. Horizon Project Elaborator, with 38 partners from across Europe working together to design inclusive, safe, affordable and sustainable mobility in cities. Lund is one of twelve cities participating in the work, and Lund company Sensative's IoT platform Yggio will be the main platform for managing traffic data in European cities. The fact that Sensative's IoT platform Yggio is now the starting point for Europe's work is a good mark of the work already done in Lund with Yggio as its base.” Lund may well become the city in the project that can first demonstrate mature solutions for measuring traffic with sensors,” says Peter Bårmann from Sensative.
Climate-smart city and CoAction: In the autumn, Lund was ranked as Sweden's most environmentally friendly municipality in 2023 by the magazine Aktuell Sustainability. The municipality of Lund has already been working with Climate Neutral Lund 2030, and is now strengthening climate work through project CoAction Lund where Future by Lund is included as a partner. The project aims to make Lund climate-neutral by 2030, and this will be made possible through increased collaboration between universities, companies, municipalities, citizens, associations and other actors in Lund. With CoAction being granted, Lund became one of two pilots in Sweden (the other being Stockholm). This means that the work done in Lund will be followed by researchers and many other cities and presented as an international example.
The Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona was held in early November and Lund was, of course, in place through, for example, Kraftringen, Alfa Laval and Cleantech Scandinavia, politicians and representatives of the Department for Sustainable Growth at Lund Municipality and Peter Kisch, Charlotte Lorentz Hjorth and Pia Kinhult from Future by Lund. Lund had two important activities as a climate-neutral city. On the one hand, Anders Almgren, Chairman of the Lund Municipal Board, spoke during the program item Tomorrow Building - Innovation in the Race Towards Net-Zero, and on the other hand, Alfa Laval, Kraftringen and the municipality of Lund held a workshop on district heating. Many homes in Europe need heating other than gas and district heating may be the solution of choice.
The year has also offered City system agents, a webinar on Future by Lund as an innovation platform, contacts within Biotechnology in Greater Copenhagen, design students working on the appearance of sensorer and many, many other events. Of course, we have also worked to prepare for the future through more project applications, possible test beds and exciting new partners. We will tell you more about this as soon as we know more.
Thank you to all of you who participated in 2023 — and we wish you all many really good collaborations in 2024!
The team at Future by Lund