Tuesday August 28 - Uppsala





Annemieke Alenius, Carol Hibbard and Karolina Sidwall

Today was spent focusing on the Science and Technology area in Uppsala, the innovation capital of Sweden.  The first meeting was hosted by the Administrative Director (Annemieke Alenius) and the Marketing Manager (Karolina Sidwall) at the Akademiska Hospital.   Annemieke and Karolina shared an overview of the hospital and some of the unique challenges in leading in the public sector.  They shared how the hospital is incorporating lessons learned from other industry including tele-medicine, and information sharing.  Annemieke shared her thoughts on the contributing factors of Sweden’s success in women in leadership:  childcare structure, liberal parental leave (480 days!) with some of the leave required to be split between the parents, culture - working mothers are the norm.  There are also many programs designed to increase the number of women in leadership roles such as training programs and mentoring programs. 



The afternoon was spent at the Uppsala Innovation Center, hosted by Mr. Lars Olde.  The Uppsala Innovation Center provides a business incubation center for entrepreneurs.  Through the center, entrepreneurs are provided with business resources including Business Coaches from throughout industry.  During a given year, the Uppsala Innovation Center hosts several dozen project ideas in various stages of becoming a business.  Out of 71 companies that have passed through the Incubator Acceleration Phase, 67 are still in business.  Lars attributes the success rate to a stringent screening process for the applicants. 

 

Ms. Kristin Hellman also provided an overview of Uppsala Bio, a non-profit devoted to linking Academia and Industry in the life science area.  They sponsor approximately 5-6 projects each year.  In partnership with Akademiska, they are helping to take entrepreneurial ideas from all employees and turning them into innovations.  78% of the participants have been women. 

Lastly I had the opportunity to meet with the CEO of Arocell, Dr. Anne-Charlotte Aronsson.  Her company participated in the Uppsala Innovation Center Business Incubator project with Dr. Aronsson participating as the Business Coach.  She followed the idea into establishment of the company and became the CEO.  Her perspective on women in leadership is that there is still much progress to be made with women entrepreneurs and she is always looking for ways to promote women in leadership in a highly technical field.