Working for the Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy and Innovation, I meet wonderful people every day. One of them is Michael Camitz, a senior adviser from Uppsala Innovation Center, Sweden. UIC has been well established for more than a decade. Growth companies within UIC increased their turnover to $51.6 million in 2014. This positive trend allowed them to increase their workforce. In 2014, 601 people were engaged in UIC companies, compared to 552 during the previous year.

According to UBI-Global, UIC is the fifth best university incubator in Europe and the 10th in the world, with a 90 percent success rate. A 90 percent success rate means 9 in 10 start-ups that complete its 24-month incubation succeed in the market. Those who don’t graduate are mostly the start-ups that are highly unlikely to succeed in the market due to fatal weaknesses. A successful start-up is innovative, composed of dedicated teammates with commercial feasibility and high potential for growth (scalability), even better with the possibility of being globally successful. 

UIC has carefully selected mentors. They can connect start-ups to meet the right people. Camitz introduced one medical start-up to PricewaterhouseCoopers and helped them make a contract. This was made possible due to his long experience in business. At UIC, 70 mentors are registered and are fully active all year round. The director of GE Nordic Region had started to work as a mentor, and so other magnificent mentors followed suit. UIC has a network of about 20 specialists and industrialization coaches experienced in moving from prototype to series production.

In order for start-ups to be successful, mistakes should be socially tolerable. If mistakes are frowned upon, innovation and entrepreneurship die. Besides, like UIC, if universities have incubation centers, it has the right reason. Some researchers have good projects. Finding an innovative business item in Uppsala actually increases the chances of building a good start-up. There are 40,000 students in Uppsala. Researchers account for more than 50 percent of those start-ups being incubated now. In Sweden, they have the “professor’s privilege,” meaning that researchers have the ownership of their own research findings. So Uppsala recommends students and researchers patent their research results before sharing them in academic magazines to protect their intellectual property rights and have a foundation for future commercialization.

For start-ups, the government has a role to play also. The government should trust the private sector. Too much interference is detrimental. There is a governmental agency for start-ups in Sweden. After receiving grants from it, UIC has to deal with much paperwork. The government can just evaluate the result and decide whether to give another chance or not. Also, any government should care about regulations. Unreasonable regulations can kill off many potentially successful start-ups. Besides, the government has to help start-ups receive good funding. Initial funding is critical for start-ups. The Swedish government provides good funds for start-ups without claiming any equity.

For Swedish start-ups to be globally successful, Korea seems to be the best choice in Asia, considering its great Internet connection, wonderful infrastructure for information technology-related industries, reasonable living costs, stable systems and other factors. Korea can be the first partner in Asia with UIC. GCCEI and UIC can collaborate to help Swedish start-ups that want to enter the Korean market. GCCEI can conduct feasibility tests for Swedish start-ups. For instance, doing market research, whether the Swedish start-up has appropriate revenue and business model and understands the competition. UIC will do the same for any Korean start-ups that want to enter the European market. After all, this will benefit start-ups in both countries. That’s the bottom line. 

By David Sehyeon Baek

David Sehyeon Baek is the chief of the Gyeonggi Center for Creative Economy and Innovation’s international affairs, cooperation and public relations. The views reflected in the article are his own --Ed.