Interview with Stina Thor, Marketing & Communications Manager, Uppsala Innovations Centre

Prior to the release of the regional and World University Business Incubator rankings, International Key Account Manager, Nick Stafunski, took a short train ride from Stockholm to Uppsala to give an hour long private benchmark presentation to Uppsala Innovation Centre’s staff and board members. The presentation is an exclusive feature for all UBI Global Gold Members and includes all benchmark information on the incubator including KPIs. As this presentation took place before the release of the regional and world rankings, Uppsala Innovation Centre’s position was not revealed to them at this time.

I joined Nick and caught up with UIC’s Marketing & Communications Manager, Stina Thor, to conduct a short interview to learn how this Gold Member is using their presentation to assess their incubators performance and make strategic plans for the future.

Why do you think it is important for UIC to take part in the Global Benchmark?
It’s important because this is the only possible way to be benchmarked worldwide. Before UBI Global came along an incubator could be ranked inside a specific country for example Sweden, but there was no global ranking. The benchmark is a vital tool for us to measure how we are working compared to other incubators in Europe and around the world.

Why did UIC choose to become a Gold Member?
We saw the option to receive a private live presentation as important because we wanted to have an in depth discussion regarding what the figures really say. This feature in the gold membership is a way to take parts of the data and ask questions to UBI interactively, regarding our results. Moreover to be able to do this together with the UIC personnel and the UIC board was also very significant.

Now that you have received the presentation and report, what will UIC and your board do with this information?
During our strategic meeting today we will sit down and use the information to analyse how we are presently working, what we can be doing better and what changes we should be making. So the information we got today is greatly beneficial for the strategic work going forward. It is a platform that allows UIC to see where we currently stand worldwide; allowing us to grade ourselves. It is another great tool with which to make strategic plans.

How do you use the ranking?
The ranking is used in our marketing and in situations where we present UIC and our business. We are really proud of the ranking we got this year and we are pleased that we have made the city of Uppsala proud too. We have noticed that the ranking have gained us a lot of attention internationally. We had a lot of international visitors prior to taking part in the ranking however the number of international visitors we receive has increased along with international interest in UIC. With this in mind the ranking has enhanced credibility to our work.

Uppsala Innovation Centre

• Location: Uppsala, Sweden
• Founded: 1999
• University affiliation: Uppsala University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
• Website:http://www.uic.se
• Projects Director: Per Bengtsson
• Mission: To help businesses achieve sustainable and viable growth
• UBI Global Membership Status: Gold Member

Global Benchmark 2015

Global Rank

10

Regional Rank

5

UIC’s Projects Director, Per Bengtsson, accepting UIC’s 5th place award in the category of Top University Business Incubator, at the European leg of the UBI Awards in Turin, Italy.