2007-10-19

RAMP07 showed world-class business concepts

{mosimage}The Aula Magna auditorium of Karlstad University was packed to the last seat and the participants were truly world class at RAMP07. That was made clear by the fact that this year’s event had an international focus, where the business concepts were discussed by people from several continents.

– It was exciting to see the great chances for the companies to grow on the global market as well, commented Anna Lundmark Lundbergh, who is the new managing director of the Värmland branch of ALMI, a government company supporting small and middle-sized businesses.

Thursday, 18 October saw a throng of visitors gathering at Karlstad University to do business, broaden their contact networks and be inspired by innovative business concepts. By way of real-time direct links to four continents, the potential of the business concepts was scrutinised from an international perspective as well. Representatives of the Swedish Trade Council offices in Johannesburg, Vienna, Beijing and Chicago gave their views on the export opportunities to their respective countries.

One of the participating companies this year was Calmark, the originator of a method to detect hypoxia in babies right before or during birth. DIVO was another company that was exposed. It is behind a product for the prevention of serious diving accidents. The visitors also became familiar with FLK Mikrofonen, a project that has developed a unique microphone model for recording acoustic music. Next in line was WPCS, a spin-off from the College of Mining and Metallurgy in nearby Filipstad. The patented WPCS invention makes it possible to purify water from heavy metals in an effective, economical and sustainable way. The fourth company on display was DropOff Shop. The business concept is to receive and sell stuff for individuals and companies on the most suitable auction site on the Internet.

Two of the participating companies provided a retrospective to the previous year. One of them was Precer, which now revealed its first prototype for hybrid vehicles powered by pellets.
– It’s awesome to come back and show that what we talked about last year has now evolved to a completely new and unique vehicle technology. The attention has already been enormous, said Martin Larsson, who is the founder of Precer, at the mingle session after the show.

 Left is Right was the other company reporting what has happened since their RAMP participation a year ago. 

– The time after RAMP06 was truly unbelievable. The huge attention during the past year has meant that we’re going to speed up the opening of our branch offices, said Olle Öberg, managing director of Left is Right, during the show. 

This year was the fourth time that RAMP was arranged. The purpose is, as always, to inspire more people to develop their ideas into exciting companies and to create a stimulating meeting point that leads to new contacts and businesses.

The media attention was immense this year as well, including TV, radio and newspapers. And already on the following day, several trade magazines had contacted the companies to get more information about the business concepts and their development. It goes without saying that we have only seen the beginning of the effects following RAMP07.