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Case: "The GTS institute is our R&D department"

There are seven GTS institutes in Denmark. Their objective is to spread the most recent knowledge and state-of-the-art technology to the business community and thus further the competitiveness of the companies

Companies can buy services from the GTS institutes or participate in collaboration projects that are co-funded.

Key impact indicators:

  • Economic growth
  • Productivity per employee

Collaboration with GTS-institutes increases productivity

Growth in productivity (percent)

Growth in productivity(percent)

Relation between collaboration with GTS institutes and productivity per employee.

Source: DAMVAD extract of data from Statistics Denmark

The GTS institute is our R&D department

Mercon ApS develops sensor systems that can warn about rundown roads. The company is small, and yet the research team behind it is large.

Ulrik Merrild, CEO in Mercon"It makes us more interesting to the surrounding world that we collaborate with the Alexandra Institute and researchers at Aarhus University."

Mercon only has four permanent employees, but thanks to collaboration with a GTS institute, the research content of the company’s services is great.

"We sometimes say that the Alexandra Institute is our R&D department with more than 100 employees," says Ulrik Merrild, CEO in the entrepreneurial company Mercon.

With a smile he says that naturally collaboration with a GTS institute is not the same as having in-house researchers. However, this is not a joke.

“We contact the Alexandra Institute if we have a concrete assignment, and in turn, we listen to their ideas. There have been several occasions where the researchers have been interested in something we had not thought of, but which we could easily imagine as part of our product range,” says Ulrik Merrild.

GTS fills knowledge gaps

Mercon manufactures sensor systems that can be installed on a car, for instance. When the car drives along the road, the sensors are able to register the state of the road with great accuracy.

The system can warn the driver about risks of ice, aqua-planing and similar. The system is also so precise that it can reveal emerging cracks in the road surface long before these become visible to the naked eye. This could, for instance, save a municipality a lot of money by enabling it to repair the road in time instead of waiting until it breaks down.

One of the first things the company did after being established in 2002 was to ask for a meeting with the Alexandra Institute.

“We knew that there were gaps in our knowledge. The Institute brought us together with competent people who were able to fill these gaps. We were also encouraged to look at our technology in a wider perspective than simply as a solution to the registration of the state of roads. The fact is that we have a basic technology that can be used for many different purposes.” For instance, the technology can be used to reveal ice on aeroplane wings or on runways, or to discover emerging cracks in blades on wind turbines.

“We felt that our company was elevated to a higher level. On the whole, it makes us more interesting to the surrounding world that we collaborate with the Alexandra Institute and via them, with researchers at Aarhus University.”

It takes resources to collaborate

Asked whether it is demanding to manage the collaboration with the GTS institute, Ulrik Merrild answers:

“It has cost considerable resources, but I have no doubts that it would have cost us more if we had have to acquire the knowledge we lacked in another way. I can highly recommend that other entrepreneurial companies establish collaboration with a GTS institute. My additional advice is that people begin the dialogue as early as possible.”

90 percent of the 20,000 companies that receive help, technology and knowledge from the GTS institutes every year are small and medium-sized.

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last modified April 04, 2018