Coming Together To Build a More Sustainable Future

Ignite Sweden Summit brought together nearly 180 representatives from incubators, corporates, partners, startups in Uppsala.

During the event, co-hosted by Ignite Sweden and the city of Uppsala, we dove into the topic of how to build a sustainable future together with startups.

The two-day program showcased a range of success cases between Toyota Material Handling Europe & Kairos Logic, Ekkono Solutions & Nederman, Alfa Laval & Reliefed Technologies, Rexel Sverige & SustainLab, the Swedish Waste Management & the startups Parlametric and Brighteco, and Umeå kommun & Uminova Innovation together with the startups Bufferleaf, The Fine Arc Nordic AB & Oterlu AI.

The fifth edition of the Summit also included a range of keynotes, sessions and panel discussions deep diving into how to measure impact, scale climate solutions, driving an innovation strategy with startups and the future of corporate innovation accelerators, among other topics.

The event also included the possibility to visit three of the many innovation hubs located in the city of Uppsala: Base 10, Testa Center and Green Innovation Park.

The speakers that took to the stage to share their knowledge and experiences regarding innovation and collaboration included Erik Pelling, Charlotte Skott, Monica Söderström & Annika Remaeus (Uppsala kommun), Jonas Klang, (Toyota Material Handling Europe), Anders Alneng (Ekkono), Lina Svansberg (Compare), Anders Nyander (Alfa Laval), Catharina Sandberg (LEAD), Céline Farcet (L’Oréal), Eliran Elimelech (Start up Nation Israel), Faisa Abdi (QC Renewable Energy), Frida Hedström, Mikaela Färnqvist, Stina Lantz, Sara Hamlin, & Sasan Shaba (Ignite Sweden), Jenny Elfsberg (Vinnova), Gunnar Fredriksson, Swedish Waste Management, Humaira Baneryd, Rexel, Karin Ruiz, Sting, Karin Bengtsson (Kista Science City), Katarina Blomkvist (Daily Innovation), Le Anh Ma (Altris), Lauri Lehtovuori (Combient Foundry), Lovisa Högberg (Reliefed), Mala Valroy, (Industrifonden), Mamoun Taher (Graphmatech), Maria Svantemark (Sustainlab), Matts Nyman (BizMaker), Noah Öberg (Bufferleaf), Olle Gelin (AirForestry), Fredrik Röst (Umeå kommun), Salomon Abresparr, (Borlänge Municipality), Urban Roth (IBM) and Örjan Jansson (WWF). The event was moderated by Maria Olofsson (Ignite & Uminova) and Thomas Frostberg (Sydsvenskan, HD & DagensIndustri).

Takeaways from the Summit

These are some learnings shared during the many fruitful discussions from the day:

  • The innovation ecosystem is uniquely placed to support startups and lower the obstacles for collaboration
  • Impact is increasingly important, and is required for success of any business
  • Collective projects and learning from one another is essential for driving sustainable innovation
  • Having a structure for collaboration and breaking the process down into smaller steps with achievable milestones can speed up collaborations and help them become long term partnerships
  • ‘Patient money’ and long term investment is needed, especially in deeptech fields


The Collaboration Heroes of 2022

The sixth annual Ignite Awards ceremony also took place during the event. The awards celebrated the success stories of 2022 and recognized startups, corporates and public sector organizations for their collaborative and innovative work.

This year we also added three new awards highlighting the fantastic work of our local and international partners in the innovation ecosystem.

These are the winners of the Ignite Awards 2022:

Ignite Master of Startups (Public Sector): Umeå Municipality
Ignite Master of Startups (Private Sector): L’Oréal
Ignite Sustainability Heroes (Public Sector): City of Mölndal, Brighteco & Parlametric
Ignite Sustainability Heroes (Private Sector): Alfa Laval & Reliefed
Ignite Rapid Rollout (Public Sector): Uppsalahem & Collactivate
Ignite Rapid Rollout (Private Sector): Rexel & SustainLab
Ignite Master of Public Collaboration: Parlametric
Ignite Master of B2B Collaboration: Ekkono Solutions
Ignite National Partner Hero: Sting
Ignite Community Engagement Hero: Peak Innovation
Ignite Global Partner Hero: CISB – Swedish-Brazilian Research and Innovation Centre

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