Create something meaningful

For You

SPARK program provides interesting opportunities for inventors, mentors, students, and industry.

For inventors we provide 2 year program and support to develop your idea towards practical solution either to be utilized commercially or clinically.

For mentors and advisors we offer an opportunity to use their expertise and networks to help inventors to accomplish their goals and develop their networks globally.

For students in all domains we offer education, project work as well as thesis work opportunities in international teams as well as opportunities for their career development.

Projects in SPARK program offer to industry possibilities for different partnerships through development and pilot testing to licensing of the developed technologies.

 

Guiding principles in our events

On top of a guiding thought “Starting with the End in Mind”, the Stanford program was  built on five principles, and all the SPARK programs follow these:

On University campus

Ongoing two year program

Open exchange and no hierarchy

Multiple opinions and perspectives

No need to reach consensus

For inventors

SPARK provides a two-year program for academic and clinical inventors in health tech and life science space. It supports scientists, students and health care professionals by educating on drug and health tech discovery and development and building the understanding of business aspects related to their discoveries.

For SPARKees we provide top-notch project specific advising and assistance in creating partnerships with industry, financiers and other relevant stakeholders. We help to test your hypothesis on major markets and build market understanding.

If your project reaches a stage that you establish a company during the program, and it starts operating, then it is time to start using business development services by accelerators, business incubators etc. Also, if the project leads to a product/solution that can be used for providing services, your time at SPARK comes to an end, or the project doesn’t progress as expected, those are also reasons for becoming alumni.

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EDUCATION

“SPARK scholars and health care professionals” (AKA ‘SPARKees’) must attend regular seminars and workshops that teach the process on how to develop a solution (drug, medical device, bioinformatics…) and what needs to be understood on commercial and financial aspects for exploiting the commercial value of the solution. These are open for everyone.

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MENTORSHIP

Teams and our selected mentors meet once in three weeks (Tuesday at 16:30-20:00). Meetings are closed-door sessions, requiring signing a NDA/CDA by participants. Each project team provides regular updates to mentor panel and receives feedback and advice how to increase the maturity of their solutions. Mentors are able to provide project-specific advice for each stage of the development.

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ACCESS TO INTERNATIONAL NETWORKS 

SPARK programs are running in over 60 top level research and clinical institutions world wide. We also provide access to all these global hubs and their mentors and stakeholder networks. Mentors and experts e.g. from Stanford, Oslo, Copenhagen and Sydney are advising our projects. SPARK network also organize showcase events in connection to most important industrial and investor events such as BioInvestor forum where our teams have opportunities to pitch their cases.

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APPLYING 

Calls are targeted for wide spectrum in health tech and life science field; from drugs and vaccines to diagnostics and medtech – all the way to bioinformatics and healthIT.

Call information you can find by clicking here.

In case you have an idea contact SPARK managers for preliminary discussions about applying in the next call.

For mentors and advisors

SPARK connects experienced industry and finance related professionals with academic and clinical collaborators and is a source for promising projects that may be developed into novel solutions in health tech and life science space.

Our mentors and special advisors counsel SPARK teams on product development, clinical care, regulation, business, and finance, and they help prepare participants for careers in the commercial sector that link fundamental research to important new solutions.

We are endowed with tens of enthusiastic, experienced and highly talented industry and finance professionals, who either regularly attend as mentors at our SPARK mentoring events or they are project specific advisors for the project teams. They provide advice and share their wisdom in collaboration with the SPARK management team. We are grateful to them for helping us fulfill the potential of Finnish based inventions and help advance them to benefit patients and society.

Mentors and advisors

  • Provide feedback on our current projects
  • Aid in the selection of new projects
  • At times, advice specific projects on a one-on-one basis
  • Can facilitate advancement of projects by introductions to potential partners, or in some cases form companies around selected assets
  • Opportunities to participate and also find investment opportunities in the SPARK projects
  • Access to global network of SPARK programs

Our mentors represent locally and globally acknowledged competencies on industry, business, finance, product development, regulation and clinical expertise.  You can reach our mentors through SPARK educational and mentoring events.

For more information, please contact SPARK managers.

For students

SPARK offers opportunities for students in all disciplines. That is due the nature of need for multidisciplinary competencies in project teams. Especially we want to invite business school and design school students that have had less opportunities to integrate themselves to the health tech and life science industry.

We offer opportunities internationally for students from universities and universities of applied sciences. The offering consists of

  • Education: courses on this industry, its business and financial aspects (with opportunities to get credits)
  • Small scale projects: incl. preliminary market surveys, competitor analysis, financial analysis…
  • Trainee opportunities: at SPARK projects or for SPARK program
  • Thesis topics for BSc/MSc/PhD: could be related to multiple aspects of building new solutions, how to make those viable and fundable, to operate in international environment, and to make those available for patients.

For more information, please contact SPARK managers.

For industry and investors

SPARK provides a unique dealflow generating platform for investors and industrial companies. Access to high quality deal-flow and value creating ecosystems are crucial for successful investing and acquiring valuable assets. Effort is time consuming and gaining access to the best projects on a multinational level is limited.

SPARK network offers a unified and proven dealflow of investees and acquiring targets. We have hundreds of selected projects around the world representing wide spectrum of solutions on all aspects of health-related challenges. We organize our own events and participate in events in which investors and industry can meet the SPARKees and build relationships with those.

For more information, please contact SPARK managers.