6. MARKETING MIX
6.2.1. Características de la residencia asistida
From the academic researchers’ point of view, we can distinguish two main routes for commercializing research results (see Figure 5.1). One is
collaboration with existing firms, which can be large or small. The other route is the formation of new start-up companies, so-called university spin- offs.
Figure 5.1. The two routes for commercializing research results
Medtech research Established firm Start-up firms
In tables 5.8-5.12 we give for each of the research environments that we have looked closer at in this study the names of established companies with which these environments have collaborated and the names of start-up companies spun off since the late 1980s (i.e. around 1987/88). Regarding the former, it must be admitted that the listing is not complete. We have in first place tried to identify the most central partners during the 20-year period. Thus, there may be other firms with which joint R&D activities have taken place, but these collaborations have not been considered particularly important. There may also have been industrial connections that our interviewees are not aware of, since they have been handled by colleagues. Also regarding the start-up companies there are some firms, for example created for consulting or patent-holding purposes, that are not included in the tables.
Table 5.8. Firm involvement for investigated research environments in the Stockholm and Uppsala region (since late 1980s)
Unit Research collaboration with
established firms
Start of new company
Medical Engineering, KI and Technology and Health, KTH
GE Health Care (Norway) Radi Medical Systems St. Jude Medical Adolesco Cathprint Gripping Heart MIPS Nanexa Medical Repair Technologies RT Technology SciBase Research Center for
Radiation Therapy, KI78 Elekta Latronix Nucletron Scandinavia Scanditronix/IBA C-RAD79 RayClinic RaySearch80
Biomedical and X-Ray
Physics, KTH81
Silex
+ a number of foreign firms (mainly contract research and non-medical applications)
CardioVas Inc. (US)
Excillum82
Hearing Armour Inc. (US) Center for Image
Analysis (Uppsala) Amersham Biosciences IMTEC83 Sidec Technology Uppsala Imanet Virinova
Applied Medical Imaging Diascan
Rainfall
78 There are a number of other firms that have been formally involved in the center, but
their activity level has been low and in several cases they have chosen to leave the center.
79 C-RAD is a group consisting of three companies all of which have spun off from the
competence center: C-RAD Imaging, C-RAD Positioning and C-RAD Innovation (previously PencilBeam Technologies.).
80 RaySearch is based on research carried out before the start of the competence center, but
the company was founded when the center had been put in place.
81 Mamea Imaging (now owned by Sectra) is a spin-off from KTH’s Department of
Physics. The founder of this company was also involved in the start-up of C-RAD.
82 This company is commercializing a new hard x-ray source, currently for non-medical
applications. At a later stage, according to the business plan, medical applications will also be targeted.
83 IMTEC was an early spin-off company established in 1980 based on STU-funded
research on computerized imaging at the universities of Uppsala and Linköping. IMTEC went bankrupt in 1993 after which some of its assets and staff were taken over by Sectra in Linköping (a competitor in the radiology field).
Table 5.9. Firm involvement for investigated research environments in Lund (since late 1980s)
Unit Research collaboration with
established firms
Start of new company
Electrical & Information Technology, Lund Inst. of Technology
Gambro
Siemens/Siemens-Elema St. Jude Medical
Epic Life Science
Electrical Measurements, Lund Inst. of Technology
Amersham Pharmacia AstraZeneca
ATS Medical (USA) Bioinvent
Biotech/Gyros Siemens-Elema Tetra Pak (not medical)
Ceram ErySave Iset
Lund Laser Center, Lund Inst. Of Technology
AstraZeneca
STI Medical Systems (USA)
GasPorOx SpectraCure Spectraphos Biomedical Engineering
Group, Lund University
Atos Medical Jolife ProstaLund Siemens (Germany)
New company84
Table 5.10. Firm involvement for investigated research environments in the Gothenburg region (since late 1980s)
Unit Research collaboration with
established firms
Start of new company
Biological Physics, Chalmers
Nobel Biocare (until 1998/99) Q-Sense Biomedical engineering, Chalmers AstraZeneca Nobel Biocare Ortivus Medical St. Jude Medical Medfield Diagnostics Neoventa Medical Oiido
Svenska Telemedicin System SACS Medical
Biomaterials, Univ. of Gothenburg
Artimplant Astra Tech
Mölnlycke Health Care Nobel Biocare
Other firms involved more recently through the Vinnväxt and VinnExcellence programs85
(Integrum)86
84 A new company is now being started to develop a patient alarm for communication
between patients and healthcare personnel.
85 The following firms are involved in the Vinnväxt program Biomedical Development in
Western Sweden: Nobel Biocare, Mölnlycke Healthcare, Cochlear Nordic, Artimplant, Tataa Biocenter, Doxa, and Alertis A/S. The following firms are involved in
BIOMATCELL: Arcam, Bactiguard, Cellartis, Integrum, Sandvik, St. Jude Medical, and Tataa Biocenter.
86 The founder of Integrum is an orthopedic physician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
But the supervisor of the founder’s PhD thesis was one of the professors at the Department of Biomaterials. It means that the biomaterials research constitutes a crucial part of the company’s technology base.
Table 5.11. Firm involvement for investigated research environments at the Linköping Institute of Technology (since late 1980s)
Unit Research collaboration with
established firms
Start of new company
Biomedical Engineering Cambio Healthcare Systems87
ContextVision88 Fältelektronik Perimed89 Sectra90 ServoMed Synectics Medical
Within NIMED: See Table 8
Bio-Optico LB Index Ldiamon (Estonia) Lisca Development Melerit Medical Optovent OptoQ Saphena Commercial Products Unilink WheelsBridge
Applied Physics Biacore
Biosensor Application
BioChromix Micromuscle RGB Technologies Spago Imaging
Table 5.12. Firm involvement for investigated research environments in Umeå/Luleå (since late 1980s)
Unit Research collaboration with
established firms91
Start of new company
Center for Biomedical Engineering and Physics
Bruker Optics Scandinavia Explizit GE Healthcare Maquet (Getinge) Morgan Electroceramics Towser Co Ltd (Japan) Umbio Biomedia Technologies BioResonator CMTF Affärsutveckling DermaSpection Likvor Videoakt
In this section, we focus on the research collaboration with established firms, but in the next section we will come back to the start-ups.
Within many environments there has been a strong and over time increasing interest in establishing collaboration with industry. An important driver has been the researchers’ desire to have the results commercialized and used to improve healthcare. The researchers may also see other benefits associated with company involvement. It can be additional funding and access to
87 Cambio is a spin-off from Linköping Institute of Technology, but has its origin in another
department.
88 This company came in as a partner via a professor who moved to Biomedical
Engineering from another department.
89 Perimed is an earlier spin-off from the department (1980).
90 This company came in as a partner via a professor who moved to Biomedical
Engineering from another department.
91 There are 8-10 other companies that have been involved in the research, but to a less
valuable resources and knowledge (e.g. about markets or production). Another contributing factor is STU/Nutek/VINNOVA’s demands for industry involvement in the research. In some cases, partnership with
industry has been a necessary condition for grants (e.g. competence centers). These ambitions also reflect a general trend in society where there is
increasing pressure on the universities to contribute more effectively to the industrial and economic development (“the third mission”). The universities have been developing their own support systems for innovations
(technology transfer offices, holding companies, incubators, science parks, etc.). These support resources have increasingly been used by the medtech research environments (e.g. for getting help with patenting and selling licenses to companies).
As shown in the tables, there are in total a fairly large number of established firms that have had some kind of collaboration with the investigated
medtech research environments over the past twenty years. Of course, the intensity of the collaboration, as well as the form and duration, has varied a great deal. There are some examples of very long-term and successful collaborations, which have brought major benefits to the companies. We have already mentioned Biacore-Applied Physics in Linköping and Nobel Biocare- and Astra Tech-biomaterials researchers in Gothenburg. Electrical Measurements in Lund has established a fruitful collaboration with
AstraZeneca (see comment on contract research below). Within both of the medtech competence centers there are a few firms that have been actively involved in research project over the whole ten-year period. But in many other cases the collaborations have not been so deep or long-term and the effects have been small or non-existent. Generally, it is not unusual that collaborative projects are described as failures in the sense that the results have not been commercialized by the companies.
In many cases the researchers’ attempts to establish more extensive collaboration with medtech firms (especially the larger ones), and having the research results commercialized by them, have encountered difficulties. The following quotation from a research leader illustrates a kind of
experience that does not seem to be unusual:
We wish that the results that come out of our research will be used by industry – since there are obvious practical
applications. Regrettably, however, it has been difficult to establish collaboration with firms. The small ones cannot afford to do it, and the large ones are too sluggish and too
bureaucratic. Even if they are interested in what we are doing the decisions are taken “seven levels away in their
trends on the stock exchange. These experiences have made me quite cynical.
Another research leader tells the story about a large Swedish medtech company where the R&D manager in one of the divisions was interested in starting up a collaborative project. However, these plans were stopped by the group management, who decided that the resources should instead be used for the existing core products. It was not a matter of money but about how to allocate people. Other researchers confirm that even if there is some enthusiastic person in the company it may sometimes be difficult to get project ideas anchored at the management level.
Applied Electronics at Chalmers and Electrical Measurements in Lund have already been mentioned as historical examples where the researchers have experienced difficulties in getting the Swedish firms interested in
collaboration and commercialization. But there are others who also
complain about the difficulties to get the established firms interested in “real collaboration”. If we consider the long time span (twenty years) there seem to be relatively few examples of successful commercialization – in the sense that new research results have been transformed into new products brought to the market by an existing firm. However, it is important to point out here that there are other types of benefits that companies can get from the collaboration with an academic institution – knowledge and competence development, for example. This will be further discussed in the next chapter, where we look at the university-industry interaction from a company perspective.
But yet we must conclude that over all the collaboration between the medtech research environments and the established medtech industry has not been as frequent and extensive as one could have expected – given, for example, the applied nature of the research and the intentions of some financiers, such as STU/Nutek/VINNOVA, to promote closer links between academia and industry. Especially the large firms, with a few exceptions, have not played such an important role in the commercialization of academic research. Instead, it seems that the most important route for bringing academic inventions and research results to the market – for the benefit of healthcare – is the formation of new start-up companies. There may be several reasons why the established firms do not, as a rule, constitute an efficient channel for commercializing research results from academia. The large firms in particular tend to be very focused on their existing product lines, many of which were relatively mature already in the 1990s. Most of their R&D activities have been directed at improving these products (e.g. by developing new features, new product generations, new applications and new complementary products). If there are academic
research projects that happen to fit well with the company’s current product plan the company may become interested in collaboration – provided that the time horizon is not too long. As one manager puts it: “If we have to wait 3-4 years to see the results we cannot go in”. And yet we know that this is not a very long time perspective when it comes to academic research. Furthermore, if we consider that the medtech research carried out in Sweden is broad, together covering large parts of the scientific and technological spectrum of relevance to healthcare, while the firms tend to be specialized in narrow niches, we can understand that much of the results coming out of the research does not fall within the interest sphere of the Swedish firms. If the researcher still wants to see his or her invention commercialized, it remains to find a partner abroad or start-up a new company.
In the case of competence centers (and the now ongoing VinnExcellence Centers also funded by VINNOVA) there are always a number of
companies involved, mainly in the form of bilateral projects. But despite the fact that both centers were started more than ten years ago there are so far very few examples of new products that have been developed and
commercialized by established firms. In some cases projects are still
ongoing and may lead to commercialization later on. For example, based on NIMED research Atos Medical is developing a new optical method for diagnosis of ear inflammation. Elekta has been involved in a project on lesioning in brain tissue, which has resulted in system for optical
intracerebral guidance and RF-lesion size estimation. The technology has been transferred to Elekta for further product development (one of the researchers is now employed by Elekta).
The lack of commercialization does not mean that participation in the competence centers has necessarily been useless to the firms. Instead, at least for some companies the joint research projects have given valuable opportunities for learning. Thus, thanks to the contacts with the academic research environment the companies have been able to acquire new knowledge. Let us give a couple of examples from NIMED92:
• Perimed: NIMED gave access to broad competencies in data and image processing and specific competencies in laser Doppler flowmetry theory, modeling, signal processing and general tissue optics. The company also got knowledge build-up in general biomedical optics. This knowledge has been important not only for future products but also for improving and maintaining current products.
• Flodafors LEGO: NIMED gave an improved insight in the area of biomedical engineering. This was very valuable to the company since prior to its cooperation with NIMED it had had little to none business in medical technology.
It should be noted that despite the general tendency of university researchers to seek closer ties with industry, there are some researchers who resist too much involvement of established firms. One of them says:
We actively try to keep industry outside. I have seen how other departments have been driven towards too short-term goals. High-quality research requires academic freedom and long- sightedness. We patent and like to see them used, but prefer to license to start-up companies.
This comment highlights that industry collaboration does not only bring advantages. Obviously, from the academic researchers’ point of view there is a risk that too strong dependence on companies under certain conditions can have negative effects on the scientific level of the research (e.g., by pushing the researchers to focus too much on practical problem-solving, at the expense of advancing scientific knowledge). In general, it seems that the academic medtech research in Sweden has not suffered from this problem – at least not to a large extent (see, e.g., our discussion on contract research below). Thus, leading medtech researchers have kept their integrity relative to industry. As we have seen, the general problem is rather to make the firms more interested in collaboration.
Contract research
The above discussion pertains to firms’ involvement in research funded by Nutek/VINNOVA and/or other financiers. But the researchers may have collaboration with firms also in other forms, and this includes contract research. Usually, such projects aim to solve technical problems for the firms and build upon knowledge and capabilities generated in previous academic research funded, for example, by STU/Nutek/VINNOVA. In that way, these collaborations and their outcomes constitute an indirect effect of the grants. The following example illustrates the experience gained by one research group. But it seems that other researchers have made similar experiences and have the same opinion about this collaborative form.
Case: Electrical Measurements, Lund Institute of Technology
One of the medtech research groups at this department works on microsystem engineering and nanobiotechnology. Initially supported by the Mikonik and KOFUMA programs the group was able to establish a platform for microtechnology research, which later enabled the development of microfluidic platforms
for analyzing and processing liquids on the nano/picolitre scale, for example, for blood purification and particle separation. In parallel to a research project funded by KOFUMA, and involving PhD students, formalized contract work was carried out on behalf of a company that was developing a novel
technique for biochemical analysis. The purpose was to develop a microfluidic device based on ink-jet technology – a kind of “nano-pipette” – that could be a part of the company’s system. This was perceived to be a good application. The researchers built up in their lab a full-scale experimental set-up based on the company’s product concept where the device was developed and tested. However, at the end the company chose to use another, more conventional solution. Hence, the device was never commercialized by the company.
Nonetheless, the practical result of this project in the form of a nano-pipette has proved to be of great value for the researchers themselves. The device has thus been used as an important instrument in other research projects.
Despite this positive outcome, after all, the group leader is not too happy about the contract research project as such. He means that in this case the researchers did not benefit enough from the collaboration. They rather became a sub-group within the company’s own product development project, which restricted their freedom of action and made the knowledge exchange one- sided. He would prefer an arrangement where the cooperation is mutual and where the company contributes with its own
knowledge. “It is not good if the companies use the universities as suppliers because they are cheap”, he says.
Now there are more positive experiences from a later