
Photography: Andrea Cerrato
As you know, #MTFLabs have put creativity at the centre of innovation across all industry sectors for a long time. For the past couple of years, we’ve been working on a scale up of that MTF innovation ecosystem.
Last week, we finally received official validation from Stockholm County of our new not-for-profit organisation: Industry Commons Foundation. This is a huge deal for the entire MTF community.
The Industry Commons places culture and creativity at the core of industry innovation, protects the intellectual property of both the source technology provider and the individual innovators, and democratises radical innovation using the latest technologies.
It enables technology transfer from academia and industry to labs filled with brilliant innovators from the global MTF community, it supports the ingenious transversal and hybrid ideas that come out of that process through incubation, creates entirely new market categories and helps those ideas grow to commercial prototype.
The creation of this foundation provides the platform, infrastructure and network to boost the intellectual capital that emerges from this diverse and multi-disciplinary community.
The Industry Commons is the brainchild of MTF’s founder and innovation advisor to the European Commission, Michela Magas, who will serve as the Foundation’s chair.
On its board is a collection of absolute luminaries including: the VP Innovation for Imperial College London; the former Director of Intel Labs Europe; the Director of the Swedish Media Council; the founder of the European Network of Living Labs; the COO of Urban ICT Arena at Kista; CEO of Innovation Pioneers; Head of Innovation for the Swedish National Space Agency; Executive Director of the EU Law Observatory of New Technologies; the Programme Director of the Data as an Enabler Programme at Vake; and Director of MTF, Andrew Dubber.
Next week we’ll be announcing the first Industry Commons Ecosystem (ICE) Labs to take place later this year in the lead up to the next Music Tech Fest, where we’ll showcase the results.