A Space Forum with Focus on Innovation Management

Market validation and understanding the need of the customer is a key component within innovation management and crucial for sustainable business development. That was the message from Emil Svanberg, head of the technology transfer office at Luleå University of Technology, during the fifth Space Innovation Forum.

Once again the space actors within the RIT project gathered to network, share ideas and work together side by side during an intensive forum at Space Campus in Kiruna. Initially four additional professors from Luleå University of Technology presented their research areas and how they can contribute to the space industry. The professors were Staffan Lundström, professor in Fluid Mechanics, Anna Ståhlbröst, professor in Enabling ICT, Jaap van de Beek, professor in Signal Processing and Thomas Gustafsson, professor in Signals and Systems. All four will play an important role in the Centre of Excellence for Space Technology being established by the RIT project.

– Enabling ICT is an important meeting spot between humans, technology and society and our ability to use big datasets to draw new conclusion that can help us in new ways. I think there are many ways that ICT can merge with the space sector and create added value, said Anna Ståhlbröst, Associate Professor at Luleå University of Technology.

The keynote speaker Raimo Pesämaa, Vice President of Consulting Services at the CGI, presented the CGI way of innovation management and spoke of the importance of working with Space Industry to find truly innovative ideas.

– I think we need to change the way we see IT separated from Space Science as they naturally belong together. At CGI, we work with IT sollutions and innovation from a broad perspective and we think that we can benefit from working with the space industry in a number of ways. Innovation liea in the center of a sound business model, said Raimo Pesämaa.

As usual a number of representatives from the space industry participated such as OHB Sweden, Nanospace and the Swedish Space Corporation. All of them have ongoing R&D project together with PhD students at Luleå University of technology. During the forum they presented their way of working with innovation management and what challenges they see in the future of the space business.

– Our challenge is to find new and faster ways to be more innovative, we have to reach the future before our competitors do. Digitalization is high up on our agenda as a tool that we need to develop. Therefore we have a PhD student from Luleå University of Technology working with us to develop Software Defined Radio. This is the single most important development that we are focused on within this area from the SSC Satellite branch perspective, said Mats Tyni, Executive Vice President for the European, Middle eastern and African Markets at the Swedish Space Corporation.

The forum ended with a workshop on identification and validation of intellectual assets, led by Emil Svanberg, head of the Technology Transfer Office at Luleå university of Technology.

– Many innovators underestimate the value of examining the market need for their particular innovation. At LTU Business we focus on this question as we have developed a methodology called Innovation Due Diligence in order to identify and validate a new business idea in a structured way, said Svanberg. It is also important to do so without revealing business-critical information, he concludes.

­­­Next Space Innovation Forum will take Place in May or June 2018.

Do you want to attend? If so contact:

Johanna Bergström-Roos
Project leader for RIT
[email protected]
Mobil: +46 70 544 60 21
Rymdcampus 1
981 92 Kiruna