The meeting of the university minds

Partnerships. Collaborations. Working together. These words and phrases resonate the same way in English and Swedish.

Part of the Michigan group's trip to Sweden includes attending Swedish-American Entrepreneurial Days conference, Aug. 20-23 in Växjö. (The group's composition has changed slightly. Michigan Tech, which was represented by Dave Reed and Dave Shonnard who had to return to the States, is now represented by President Glenn Mroz.) Sponsored by the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce, the conference is allowing 800 Swedish and American companies to find areas of common interest.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Ambassador to Sweden Michael Wood (a Flint native) were the keynote speakers at the opening session and both highlighted the bioeconomy connections between the two entities. Granholm underscored the importance of university involvement in the bioeconomy by recognizing the presence of Steve Pueppke, head of the MSU Office of Biobased Technologies, and Mroz during her presentation.

Wood announced that a Michigan company will soon be signing an agreement with a Swedish company to open a bioenergy production facility in the state—the first of many partnerships the country and the state hope to have.

Pueppke, Mroz, Ray Miller, manager of the Upper Peninsula Tree Improvement Center, and Doug Parks, vice president of strategic initiatives for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, used the conference to meet with a contingent of Swedish bioeconomy scientists from the region to learn more about how the Swedes created their very successful industry-university-government partnerships.

The result: some of the most efficient and profitable bioeconomy production facilities.

The Swedish scientists were: Björn Zethræs, professor of chemistry and bioenergy technology at Växjö University; Sven Risberg, program manager for the Swedish Energy Agency; Sune Bengtsson, professor at Växjö University who is also the managing director of the Växjö Värnamo Biomass Gasification Center; Lennart Gårdmark, senior adviser at Växjö Energy; and Hans Gulliksson, project manager of the Energy Agency for Southeast Sweden. The Michigan group had met with Gulliksson on Aug. 18 and he was the one who helped set up the meeting of the university minds.

"Michigan has a lot of separate pieces that are all part of the bioeconomy," Pueppke said. "What we need to do is to start to put those pieces together and we know a systems approach is necessary. Sweden has been doing this for much longer than we have. It's interesting to hear how they set up their partnerships between industry, the universities and the government."

The group of Swedish scientists was very generous with their insights and offered one caution.

"You have to be careful that as a university you don't end up in 'analysis paralysis,'" said Zethræs. "That can happen quite easily in a university setting. Sometimes you're too close to a situation and you become what we call 'home blind.' You definitely need to have an outsider come in and evaluate your bioenergy projects with fresh eyes from a systems perspective. It has happened to us here, so we now how valuable independent evaluation is."

Based on this meeting, it's quite likely that the independent evaluator will have a Swedish surname.