Sci-Tech School Leads European Tech Entrepreneurship Scalability Conversations at South Summit This Year

IE School of Science and Technology pushed the agenda of European tech entrepreneurship scalability at South Summit this year by leading the discussion at key events including the Deep Tech Forum, Scaling Up CleanTech and the mainstage panel “Conscious Innovation: For an EU Scale-up Nation.”

The main discussion focus was on breaking silos between the  academia and entrepreneurship spheres to develop viable deep technologies that focus on conscious innovation and clean solutions.

“Europe has a huge advantage,” said Ikhlaq Sidhu, dean of the School of Science and Technology on the Arena Stage. “[There are] a lot of things that can be done in the deep tech space, a lot of institutions and a lot of knowledge. It needs to have its fair share of contributions in this space.”

Sidhu led the conversation at the mainstage panel “Conscious Innovation: For an EU Scale-up Nation” with Michael Baum – founder and CEO of The Yope Foundation and previously founder of Splunk – and Carme Artigas – co-chair of the AI Advisory Body at United Nations – about the European Deep Tech Ecosystem, highlighting the need to keep investing in new materials, quantum and deep tech at the service of solving global issues.

Comparing the US and EU ecosystems highlighted the opportunity for the EU to emulate US practices of investment in start-ups by governments and big corporations. Simultaneously, Artigas and Sidhu urged EU investors to avoid falling prey to the tendency of blindly copying US investment currents and thus neglecting the significant EU history of investment in conscious tech.

“Copying is a great way to be number two,” said Sidhu, “Investors should have their own investment thesis with their values to foster conscious innovation.”

Earlier in the week, Baum – founder and CEO of The Yope Foundation and previously founder of Splunk – visited IE School of Science and Technology for a fireside chat with Ikhlaq Sidhu and allowed students the opportunity to present five start-up pitch ideas.

The Sci-Tech School also co-led the Deep Tech forum for the second consecutive year, which consisted of two panels – “Europe as a Thriving Pool of Innovation” and “The role of deep tech in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.” Experts gathered from the realms of entrepreneurship, investment, academia and public policy, including DTU Skylab Managing Director and innovation expert, Mikkel Sørensen, one of the co-founders of Rise Europe, to discuss how to effectively commercialize deep tech.

“There’s a huge conversation that needs to be had around how to make everyone in the university start thinking entrepreneurially,” said Chandra Ramanujan, principal licensing and ventures manager at Oxford University Innovation. “Primarily it’s knowledge, a lot of it is already there. It’s in-house. It’s just a question of having it made known to the research community.”

Breaking silos and fostering collaboration between academic, investor and entrepreneurial profiles was also the focus of the panel “Scaling Up Cleantech”, moderated by Bianca Dragomir, director for Cleantech for Iberia.

IE School of Science and Technology is a founding member of Cleantech for Iberia, and recently held a Cleantech Innovation Collider to tackle how the Iberian Peninsula can coordinate infrastructure, investments, regulation and breakthroughs to become one of the next European Hub of CleanTech.

The Sci-Tech School continues to breakthrough barriers between academia and industry through its Impact Xcelerator program. It is also a founding member of Rise Europe, the network of startup incubators from 13 European countries to promote technological entrepreneurship in Europe.