Entrepreneurial Universities Seeking New Ways to Commercialize Science: The case of Uppsala University’s AIMday

Swedish universities’ attempt to improve their commercialization of science is inspired by the US model – a model relying on TTOs to direct the transfer of science to market. The Swedish system is however characterized by the “teachers’ exemption”, a regulation giving all rights to the inventor. Thus, the Swedish system leaves a restricted room of maneuvering to universities: only after a disclosure by faculty is made, can commercialization activities be undertaken. Uppsala University, one of Sweden’s major universities, recently introduced an alternative “proactive” model where structured and organized cooperation platforms aim to create efficient interactions between academic research and industry. In the present study a conference called AIMday, which acts as a tool for researchindustry interactions within one of these proactive platforms, has been analyzed to (1) explain how the event and its activities function, and (2) how the event is perceived by the participants, and finally (3) what effects the participants recognize by attending this kind of proactive event. The empirical study is based on the combination of three main sources of data; written documentation concerning AIMday, interviews with participants (researchers and industry representatives) and organizers, and observations by attending two AIMday events. All participants, both researchers and industry, are satisfied and experience AIMday as an important event to create and broaden long-term networks, gain new knowledge and screen for competences for both future collaboration and employment. From the companies point of view the creation of long-term collaborations at AIMday is not a priority. At the same time organizers of AIMday have, in more recent events, incorporated the possibility of seed funding in order to support and catalyze new research projects between academic research and industry.