The Danish Startup Ecosystem Guide - Magasin - Side 42
GTS INSTITUTES
Sponsored: This article is published in collaboration with Innovation Centre Denmark
Innovation Centre Denmark:
The ecosystem’s extended
arm out into the world
Internationalisation is hard - especially as a startup with limited resources.
Innovation Centre Denmark helps through its seven centres across the globe in
collaboration with the Danish clusters.
D
anish startups often have to
be “born global” to succeed and
many dreams of a breakthrough
in the giant markets of the US,
India or China. But internationalisation is
complex when you’re in Denmark with a
limited budget for expansion.
Innovation Centre Denmark (ICDK)
helps ambitious startups get started. The
centre supports startups in Danish areas of
strength and ensures matches with players
around the world through its seven selected
hotspots in Munich, Boston, Tel Aviv, Silicon
Valley, Shanghai, Bengaluru and Seoul.
“In Denmark, we understand ‘Born Global’ as being present in Europe. But the marCamilla Sofani
Bartholdy
Executive Innovation
Manager at
Innovation Centre
Denmark
42
ket opportunities are quite different if you
dare to move outside Europe. It is a big and
difficult step, and it may be wise to start
with a pilot project in Seoul, Bangalore or
Tel Aviv before taking the full leap. And we
can help with that,” says Camilla Sofani
Bartholdy, Executive Innovation Manager
at Innovation Centre Denmark.
From its centres around the world,
ICDK connects startups with strong local
partners - access that can be hard to get
on your own without a public body like
ICDK behind you.
An extension of the clusters
ICDK typically takes delegations of several
startups to different parts of the world in
collaboration with Danish cluster organisations such as Odense Robotic, Danish
Life Science Cluster, CLEAN and DigitalLead. The clusters identify the ambitious
entrepreneurs, while ICDK finds the right
international partners to help test and
demonstrate projects in a new, international context.
”We are a strategic offer for the startups
in the clusters that think internationally.
We are the ecosystem’s extended arm out
into the world, creating sector-focused
joint initiatives with clusters and accelerator programmes,” says Camilla Sofani
Bartholdy and continues:
”Startups have to have wild ambitions
and think internationally early on. We like
to take projects that are already happening
in partnerships at home in Denmark with the clusters, the GTSs or the incubation environments at universities, so you
have a group of Danish players who get
some knowledge and experience and get
matched out in the world - and then come
home and use each other from there.”
ICDK’s 7 hotspots
•
Munich: Proptech, Quantum
Technology, Robotics & Automation.
•
Boston: Bioconvergence, Biosolutions,
Human-AI Collaboration in health care.
•
Tel Aviv: Hospital innovation, cyber
security, quantum technology, food
technology.
•
Silicon Valley: CCUS, quantum
technology, entrepreneurship, space
technology.
•
Shanghai: E-commerce and social
shopping, electrification of transport,
industrial IoT.
•
Bengaluru: CCUS/green hydrogen,
circular economy/food and
agriculture, new technologies.
•
Seoul: Metaverse for Real (K-Tech),
Towards 6G, Quantum Technology
ICDK is established in cooperation between
the Ministry of Education and Research and
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Guide