Companies in the spotlight at IASP Virtual

Helping fledgeling companies to get off the ground and building a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem is the foundation of what science parks and areas of innovation do, and we’ve got two special sessions where we’ll hear from the startups and SMEs who our industry supports.

Jernej Pintar, CEO of Technology Park Ljubljana (Slovenia) and chief community builder of tech companies leads a high-powered, trend-setting and futuristic session where we'll hear compelling entrepreneurial journeys from the founders of four startups based at IASP member parks. They'll be revealing their successes, their mistakes along the way and the benefits of being based in a technology park. The featured companies are:

• Wootzano (UK) – a robotics company from NETPark who make artificial skin for robots, thus enabling them to work with delicate tasks like picking vegetables and fruits.
• TinyEye (Canada) – Innovation Place company who run a video + audio platform that includes specialized therapeutic tools for speech-impaired kids
• Watehero (Denmark) – waste management company at Incuba who develop an IOT system for when garbage cans need to be emptied which improves costs up to 71% annually.
• Turtle Shell (India) – an eHealth company from IKP Knowldege Park who make a contactless device to place under a mattress for remote patient monitoring.
  

We'll also take a deeper look at the impact of Covid-19 on companies, and hear some success stories in the "Pandemic Pivot" session. Companies across sectors have had to pivot under Covid-19 and come up with new business models, innovative ways of working and new product lines that will last beyond the pandemic: startup guru Thomas Prexl (Heidelberg Technology Park, Germany) will introduce some remarkable companies based in STPs & AOIs around the world:

• SalonScale (Canada) – based at Innovation Place, they actually grew their revenue 101% under the Covid shutdown, when most of their salon customers were forced to close!
• Nanjing Voice of Hand Information Technology Co (China) – this social enterprise from TusPark（Jiangsu Research Institute for Innovation took sign language translation online, supporting the Deaf under lockdown.
• Hola Systems (Serbia) – this company from interactive touch screens that pivoted to non-contact temperature measurement and disinfection of the user's hands.
• Graphene Composites Ltd (United Kingdom) – based at NETPark, they pivoted their tech to make coronavirus-killing ink for personal protective equipment (PPE) to significantly increase protection.
• VDK (Russia) – located in Technopolis Moscow, this industrial equipment production company pivoted to making a patented surface sanitizer for roads, infrastructure, city squares, water and air.

Join us there to really get to know the companies our industry is supporting: you can still register until November 30th at https://www.iasp2020virtual.com/registration.