Katrinebjerg – IT Research/Business ‘City’

The Katrinebjerg IT centre/city is a large scale business park style development in Arhus that is closely aligned with the Arhus University and the private development/commercialization institute aligned with that university, the Alexandra Institute (Dean of the University sits on the Alexandra Board and key schools are members of the institute). The Alexandra Institute site clearly states the way Projects are organized by the Institute – this model derived as it was from that of Sweden’s Viktoria Institute is probably indicative of structures that have emerged under the EU research funding structures and infrastructures as I’ve noted similar distributions interactions between partner organizations and corporations in other areas – most of which transcend international borders. There is a section of financing in the same section that explains most of the funding should come from private investment in the potential for commercialization. The Katrinebjerg ‘City’ provides the locale and infrastructure for the development of networks between business and research across all disciplines. The ‘City’ offers a number of business services. The business focus is on incubation style services including shared spaces and infrastructure for start-ups. The industry rhetoric moves from the provision of shared spaces to the inference of shared competencies and if the presence of some very established industry heavy weights is anything to go by this could indeed be a valuable asset for new and innovative ventures; Google and the Danish Audio/Visual electronics company B&O – perhaps Denmark’s most prominent international brand have offices at the Katrinebjerg centre. The centre provides for networks of specific competencies to develop – basically trade organizations with specific research agendas. Its difficult to tell from the site whether these networks are ‘vapor ware’ instituted to forment network development within Katrinebjerg or whether they represent functional or emerging networks operating within that space. Much of the associated information is in Danish only. I suspect these collections of competencies are used to provides a useful more generalized link between the Arhus University Schools and Departments that are involved with the Katrinebjerg centre, The various independent research labs housed within the centre and the Various corporate entitities with offices at Katrinebjerg. These networks can be found here; The NFBi; Network for Research based User Driven Innovation , the SundhedsIT network; concerned with Pervasive Health Care and IT in health care, Komialt; concerned with pervasive computing, TEKNE; concerned with interactive development linking industry experience with digital art, NIAS ; concerned with administrative systems. There is a subscription/membership driven private network that looks particularly interesting as a commercial think tank model called ‘The Innovation Lab‘. The Innovation Lab employs ‘Lab Agents’ from a diverse range of backgrounds and experience – mostly non-technical and work on placing technological and infrastructural developments in context for industry, commerce and community sectors. They work with industry in relation to product and systems development helping to ‘overcome imaginative paralysis’ by contextualizing the possibilities of new technologies;

From the Innovation Lab site;

Through a wide and varied range of activities and media, Lab Agents work to translate the latest technological developments into hands-on experiences and meaningful scenarios. Innovation Lab interprets the meaning of technology—and makes technology meaningful for all of us.

A very interesting commercial model, the Innovation Labs has terrific slogans like; ‘Insight is Influence’ and ‘Ideas are born of movement’.

The Katrinbjerg Centre has strong ties to the University of Arhus that appear to be negotiated via the Alexadra Institute which appears central to the mangement of the information networks described above, is based at Katrinebjerg and whose members include various research bodies, university schools, corporations housed at Katrinebjerg, and large organizations external to the Arhus municipality.

The most prominent of the schools/research programs aligned with the Katrinebjerg centre are;

Department of Computer Science – There is a really interesting HCI reserach focus/centre housed here with a number of interesting projects under the banner of Hypermedia, Participatory Design, Augmented Reality, and Computer Supported Collaborative Work (beyond Groupware !*&6!). They do other Math type stuff as well….

The Information Institute – Its all in Danish – feel free to comment on what they do…

Multimedia @ Arhus Uni – Its all in Danish – feel free to comment on what they do…

Centre for Digital Aesthetics - Its all in Danish but I note Matthew Fuller’s name here.

and the most prominent for Katrinbjerg is the

Centre for Pervasive Computing – This research centre deserves a blog entry to itself and I suspect it is the principal research body engaged with the Katrinebjerg centre/city. The amount of research the centre is involved in prevents me from a providing a detailed account. But I might comment individually on some of the projects that are of particular relevance. These can be found via the links below copied from the site. Of particular interest are Centre for Andvanced Visualization and Interaction. Note that there are a number of projects that cross over between partners so that the pervasive computing is a research focus for the Department of Computer Science on Computer Supported Collaborative Work that is listed here as well – so the CFPC appears to manage an area of research interest that runs (and provides a funded node for) projects under that title which each have a different group of partner institutions attached. Super Distributed and very Dynamic the projects become kind’a virtual in the process… (fishing for comment – more ideas to explore here regarding research/development structures – I wonder how this plays out in terms of funding and commercialization/IP)

0 responses so far

Leave a Reply