CERCA organizes the Connection Day opening conference with Johan Weigelt, CEO of Karolinska Institutet Innovations AB

Johan Weigelt conference organized by CERCA opened the second edition of the Connection Day, an initiative by Catalonia Bio to connecting and gathering within the health sector.

Although the CERCA agora is a closed meeting, this edition was accessible to all the sector so Weigelt, CEO of Karolinska Institutet Innovations AB, could introduce the Karolinska innovation model.

Weigelt talked about the close relationship among academia, healthcare, and industry and underlined the specificities of the Swedish system as the so-called ‘professors privilege’, which means that intellectual properties are owned by professors and investigators. “This system has pros and cons, but it works”.

Good research and contacts

The presentation also focused on the company that supports the Karolinska Institutet in terms of innovation. The Karolinska Institutet Innovations AB holding company sells services to promoting the commercialization of research and developing start-ups in a three-phase program (idea promotion, consolidation and maturation, in a final incubator phase that lasts three years). For Weigelt, its strength lies in “having a very strong research base and a good network of industrial experts and business coaches”.

CERCA also arranged one-to-one meetings with the representative of Karolinska and the presence at ConnectionDay24 allowed the connection with agents of the sector and centres from the CERCA system.