A total of 500 guests attended the official opening of DTU Diplom’s new innovation centre which is to build bridges between students and SMEs.
The doors have now been opened to DTU Diplom’s new innovation centre which is to help build and reinforce value-adding networks, and create more jobs. The official opening was held on Wednesday, 4 March, at a ceremony attended by students, staff, external partners, and representatives of the Municipality of Ballerup.
Participants at the event had the opportunity to take a look inside the centre’s numerous workshops and laboratories which students will soon be using for sparring sessions about start-ups and other innovative projects. Students will also have the chance to find out more about internships, project partnerships, and student jobs, and the centre will give them access to tools for project management and idea generation to support innovative development processes.
Assembling tools
“The opening of the innovation centre means that DTU Diplom now has ‘One Point of Contact’ making it simple for small and medium-sized enterprises to find help in interfacing with the right offices and students. It also means that we are now assembling all the innovation tools we have already developed—in Ballerup and at Skylab—and making them available to people working on innovation projects,” explains Axel Grøndahl Kristiansen, Director of DTU Diplom.
He goes on to emphasize that the newly opened centre will, for example, help provide an overview of planned events such as the Match Event, Entrepreneurship Forum, Skylab Events and Green Challenge. In addition, it will open the door to proof of concept projects through working relationships with appropriate partners.
One of the biggest challenges facing small and medium-sized enterprises is a lack of resources to create ‘proof of concept partnerships’ in the fields of services, products and patents. This may take the form of proving the technological know-how, commercialization or sustainability of a product or service.
The plan is for the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship to change its name. Guests at the reception put forward 73 suggestions. The new name will be unveiled shortly.
Article in DTUavisen no. 4, April 2015.