The opportunities within artificial intelligence and data science is changing rapidly, reshaping how businesses operate and the products and services they offer. Denmark can achieve a 10 percent increase in GDP through better digitalization across all sectors. To fully capitalize on this potential, it is essential for pioneering research to seamlessly integrate into the society. Tech startups are at the forefront of this transformation, often willing to take risks to adopt the latest technologies and gain a competitive edge.

Universities play a crucial role in building trustworthy and successful tech startups by sharing the newest knowledge and ensuring there’s enough talent to drive innovation in new companies. Therefore, creating better frameworks for digital research talents to enter the business sector through entrepreneurship is essential. We need to unlock and support the potential academic talent pool to accelerate entrepreneurship and innovation by uniting all Danish university computer- and data science resources and programs in releasing their entrepreneurial potential and by addressing the following topics:

• How can we help talented researchers to explore and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities of their research while still advancing their careers in academia?
• How can we provide tech startups access to common platforms to cutting edge academic competences within computer science to solve complex societal or business challenges?
• How can we expand the pool of skilled individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset in computer science, including attracting talented researchers from abroad, to meet the growing demand for skilled labor in Denmark?

The main purpose of the session, organized by DTU and AU, is to discuss these topics above and to come up with feasible and actionable ideas and strategic solutions, that have a long term impact on the tech startup ecosystem around the universities in Denmark. This discussion is in particular relevant due to the increasing public investment in the framework for entrepreneurship at the universities, for example Open Entrepreneurship and DIREC activities.

Program

Introduction by the moderator: Søren Poulsen, Senior Consultant, Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University

Keynotes: Visions for unlocking the digital academic talent pool potential to accelerate entrepreneurship at the universities:

• “How can universities support academic entrepreneurship”, Jeppe Dørup, Chief Innovation Officer, AU, The Kitchen – University Innovation Hub
• “Laying the Groundwork for AI Innovation: How the Novo Nordisk Foundation is Empowering Data Science in Denmark”, The Novo Nordisk Foundation, Anna Chailyan, Senior Scientific Manager, PhD, Nat-Tech

Network activity and coffee break: High table discussions within three topics:

• How can we create more awareness about the unique Entrepreneurship opportunities in Denmark for talented International researchers?
• How can we formalise unified “easy access” concepts, in a way that does not require increased work-load and administration at the universities?
• How do we identify potential research startups start are almost “self-igniting”, but fails to pursue e.g. due to lack of knowledge to support and funding opportunities.

Startup cases: Digital competence challenges

• Startup Case 1, “Soil Health” and “TETATAT.ai”, by Line Katrine Harder Clemmensen, Professor, DTU Compute and University of Copenhagen, Department of Mathematical Sciences
• Startup Case 2, “Raven Biosciences – Bringing the power of AI and advanced analytics to the Life Science and Biotech companies”, by Founder and CEO, Raven Biosciences , Roald Forsberg, PhD in Bioinformatics and Population Genetics, AU

Panel discussion: Possible strategic solutions:

• The Novo Nordisk Foundation, Anna Chailyan, Senior Scientific Manager, PhD, Nat-Tech.
• Investor, Allan Cheng, Partner, Volver Venture
• Startup cases:
  • Line Katrine Harder Clemmensen, Professor, DTU Compute and University of Copenhagen, Department of Mathematical Sciences.
  • Roald Forsberg, CEO, Raven Biosciences , PhD in Bioinformatics and Population Genetics, AU
• Nikolaj Oppermann, Business Unit Manager, Open Entrepreneurship and CEO of ITU Business Development A/S

Conclusions and next steps

Target audience

The target audience for the session is University innovation hubs, young researchers, new tech startups, the general innovation ecosystem around the universities (e.g. Open Entrepreneurship stakeholders), and external accelerators and investors.

Follow up

The session will follow up on the session on entrepreneurship (Digital Entrepreneurship Guide) at the first D3A conference (January 2024). It is also the intention that the session will contribute input to the keynote session on entrepreneurship at the Digital Tech Summit, October 2024, which is organized by all universities in Denmark.