Mines and Minerals Innovation Summer

Important results from the project

The purpose of the project was to strenghen the capacity for innovation in the industry through a pre-incubation program aimed towards early stage business ideas (innovation cases). This was achieved in the project by students from Swedish universities supervised by experienced innovation managers, using Innovation Due Diligence as the method, working for nine weeks gathering data and doing analysis on two innovation-cases.

Expected long term effects

For the innovation-cases the project delivered solid results regarding commercialization and continued collaboration within the innovation eco system. Harshworks is being commercialized within the LTU system and TNTX is being commercialized in the incubation program at Arctic Business. For the students, the project was a learning experience within innovation and entrepreneurship as well as a working experience as an alternative to traditional careers. They took innovation seminars and practically applied/tested these methods with support and feedback from coaches.

Approach and implementation

Using Innovation Due Diligence as a framework for teams of students working with guidance from experienced innovation managers was a successful approach. The students performed qualified tasks and added significant value to the innovation cases. Recruiting cases and students to the project from all of Sweden was more complicated than anticipated as the projects offering to some extend was perceived to compete with other local/regional innovation support offerings. Adjusting to the pandemic, we moved the the project 100% online, which turned out to work far better than we feared.