Medical technology innovation ecosystems : factors influencing the formation of new companies

Sammanfattning: This thesis focuses on how the medical technology (MedTech) innovationecosystems contribute to the formation of start-ups. An innovation ecosysteminvolves collaboration and the exchange of resources in order to stimulate its owndevelopment and change over time. The MedTech innovation ecosystem ischaracterized by a large number of innovations, which are more concentrated inthe pharmaceutical industry, biotech, medical devices, and healthcare informationtechnology fields. Existing ecosystem studies offer a fairly diverse understandingof the formation goals, development parameters, and other parameters, which areoften inaccessible to an external observer. Understanding the internal processestypical of successful MedTech innovative ecosystems contributes to the adaptationof best practices for developing innovative ecosystems, reducing the financial,time, and human resources spent, and developing the economy. As a result of theactivity of innovative MedTech companies, customers receive new equipment,methods of treatment, and rehabilitation of patients, reducing the costs andworkload for medical personnel.The MedTech innovation ecosystem is explored in four Papers and anextended summary in this thesis. Since the study aimed to increase knowledgeabout how MedTech innovation ecosystems contribute to an increase in thenumber of start-ups, qualitative research strategy and content and within, crosscase, and narrative methods of analyzing the collected information were chosen.The studied phenomena were investigated from the point of view of subjectivity,that is, the interpretation of the past events of the participants and their personalview of the actions taken.The results of the study were the identification of two key parameters thatcontribute to the formation and successful development of MedTech innovativestart-ups, namely the provision of public support and the possibility of cooperation.Public and private support includes financial resources at various stages ofcompany development, including support for basic and applied research, provisionof grants at the stage of company formation for marketing research, a grants search,company registration, other loans, and grants for company formation. Nonfinancial types of support include providing access to the infrastructure of theinnovation ecosystem, which includes laboratories, specialized equipment, trainingcourses, entrepreneur support programs, etc. Collaboration involves leveraging theinternal connections of the innovation ecosystem and providing access to otherinnovation ecosystems to work on projects that cross the interests of several areas,as well as MedTech innovation ecosystems in other countries.This thesis brings more clarity to the process of formation and developmentof the MedTech innovation ecosystem and proposes a model of a successfulecosystem that could be claimed by policymakers who make decisions about thedevelopment of the industry. Moreover, the thesis offers several successful casesthat consider the non-obvious benefits that start-ups from innovativeecosystems can receive and use as an additional benefit for their development.KEYWORDS: innovation ecosystem, medical technologies, start-ups, innovation