Learning about entrepreneurship in California

PIEp Research School and Proviking Research School has together organized a PhD course in International Product development with focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. The course included visits at Lindholmen science park, Kista science city and a two-week study trip to Silicon valley and other parts of highly entrepreneurial California!

In the second part of February, eleven PhD students and two senior researchers from five different universities in Sweden set off to learn more about what makes California such a melting pot for start-ups and development of technology, software and services. During this trip the group visited Universities like Stanford and Berkeley, as well as companies, such as Xerox PARC, Ericsson and  Jet Propulsion Laboratory (part of NASA’s deep space program). The students of this course have chosen to study different aspects of innovation and a report will be completed later this spring. To submit interest of a hardcopy, please contact jenniebj@kth.se

Some reflections from the trip:

“In my opinion, one thing that really stood out from Silicon Valley was the lack of stigma connected to failure; it is actually ok to fail! An illustrative example comes from PARC where the company can conceive seeding employee start-ups with an investment, and also welcomes the entrepreneurs back if the venture did not turn out as expected.” – Anna Karlsson, PhD student, Sandvik/Luleå Technical university

“I remember visiting Willow garage and their vision of how to push the robotics development by means of a very open approach. When visiting companies you often have to sign an NDA – non disclosure agreement. But at Willow Garage we had to sign a Disclosure Agreement, meaning we had to tell people about what we had seen there. I love that idea!”  - Katarina Lund, PhD student Scania/KTH