Nordic Innovation District Development

Follow the NIDD project supported by Interreg here

Science City Lyngby and Future by Lund have just finished our 9 month long so-called ‘Forprojekt’ / Pre-project. The primary focus of the project has been to analyze challenges and potentials for us to create well-functioning innovation districts in our geographies – and in the Nordics. The results are described in a report, which points towards new actions and further surveys.

Kickstart autumn 2019
The NIDD-project was launched between Future by Lund and Science City Lyngby October 1st 2019. We initiated the projects through local visits and meetings with local stakeholders in both locations, and we defined a steering committee, who has been responsible for the surveys and case collections on both side of Øresund.

In Lyngby, our main focus has been how to create a physical framework, which can support the growth of local start-ups the best possible.

Survey among Danish start-ups
In Lyngby we elaborated an online questionnaire between January-March 2020. Starts-ups from incubation environments and science parks in Lyngby (and Greater Copenhagen) were encouraged to fill out the questionnaire through emails, newsletters and in-person presentations locally at their office sites. We wished to be able to compare Lyngby with other physical locations in Copenhagen.

From April through May, data was analyzed and in-depth case interviews were conducted. 61 start-ups answered the questionnaire and ten companies participated in in-depth case interviews. The results were clear. We need to address three main tasks to be able to create a world-class innovation district in Lyngby:

We need:

  1. More test labs, makerspaces, living labs and/or proof-of-concept centers
  2. More incubators with support programs attached, mainly focusing on scale-ups
  3. Network which connect start-ups with established companies.


You can see the results of the survey here:
Interreg rapport 2020

And the ten in-depth case interviews here: 10 caseinterview

About the Interreg project
The NIDD-project aims at developing a world-class innovation district model for Nordic university cities. We wish to learn together with Lund, and to inspire other university cities in the Nordics, which are fighting to attract and maintain start-ups and thus future jobs, in our cities/regions.

The project has clearly indicated what we need to do to improve the growth of early start-ups. A task force will now explore how to define and test different solutions to the three identified needs.

You can follow the project here or through our newsletter.

The Project is supported by: