– Every day 11 work-years are used on research in this city. More should come out of it in terms of innovation and new jobs, states Haugland in todays Bergens Tidende.
Bergens Tidende has this feature story on BTO on both its frontpage and two pages inside the newspaper. BTO celebrates its 10th year as a company and it is in that context Bergens Tidende describes the BTO’s metrics:
“• In ten years, BTO has helped establish 31 companies. 19 of these are still running. Several of them have great potential, but none of them generate much revenue –yet.
• BTO has negotiated more than 80 licensing agreements. Not all innovations are in fact suitable for establishing new companies. The solution is to sell the technology as a license to existing industrial companies.
• In addition, BTO has established Bergen Biomedical Incubator and will incorporate Nyskapingsparken Incubator in the near future.”
In addition, its is notable that BTO has established international cooperation with several other Technology Transfer Offices with the ambition to bring research from Bergen to the world.
In the newspaper article you also meet Olav Birkeland, CEO of METAS. METAS is one of the 31 companies BTO has helped move forward. METAS has its origins in the environment of IMR (Institue for Marine Research) and was established in 2009. Today eight people are working in the company. METAS has developed state of the art equipment for detecting oil- and gas leakage.
In connection with the article in Bergens Tidende Anders Haugland wrote a chronicle which was published in På Høyden (an independent newspaper for the University of Bergen).