The Power of Intersections in Global Innovation

While travelling to Spain for a board meeting, Lena Miranda, CEO of Linköping Science Park in Sweden, visited Aba Technologies in Morocco – a company developing connected healthcare pods for remote diagnostics, illustrating how local challenges can spark globally relevant innovation.

Morocco, with a population of about 38 million, is emerging as a regional hub for digital entrepreneurship, driven by improvements in education and international connectivity. The healthcare pods Lena Miranda encountered were first developed during the Covid-19 pandemic. As Morocco strengthens its technological and economic foundations, it is attracting increased interest from global investors and companies looking to engage with its rapidly evolving market.

“Their innovation allows patients to conduct medical tests and consult with doctors via secure video links, providing a practical solution to physician shortages. Initially launched in Morocco, the technology has since been adopted in several regions, including the Middle East, and demonstrates how local challenges can inspire global innovation,” says Lena Miranda.

“I’m genuinely energised by the opportunities that come from exploring innovation ecosystems in emerging markets. It is refreshing to step outside familiar contexts and see how new models develop in places, guided by bold visions for the future. The national incubator Technopark Morocco, now 20 years old and hosting six sites in five cities, has become a North African role model for supporting startups and entrepreneurial talent, and the impact is significant.”

Lena Miranda became CEO of Linköping Science Park in Sweden in 2014, after ten years of entrepreneurial experience in recruitment and staffing, during which she built up the company Skill. She served five years as chair of Swedish Incubators and Science Parks (SISP) and was a member of Sweden’s National Innovation Council. Since 2019, she has been a board member of the International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation (IASP), and last year completed her term as president. In 2022, Linköping University’s Faculty of Technology awarded her an honorary doctorate for her contributions to innovation and regional collaboration.

Her perspective, shaped at the intersection of entrepreneurship, regional development, and international policy, provides insight into how these environments can drive the next wave of breakthroughs in life sciences, deep tech, and system innovations. Lena Miranda’s career also illustrates the evolution of science parks from real estate projects to strategic hubs in global innovation ecosystems.

“I took office at a time marked by strong technological optimism. Globalisation, digitalisation, and urbanisation were at the forefront, and Agenda 2030 focused on how innovation can help address global societal challenges. However, the past decade has been characterised by the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, increasing geopolitical polarisation, and shifting the focus toward resilience, preparedness, and regional positions of strength.”

Against this backdrop, Lena Miranda notes that while the core mission of science parks remains unchanged – to create long-term innovation arenas where people, ideas, and knowledge converge – the environment has become more complex. Science parks now operate at the intersection of business, academia, and the public sector. Their ability to unite stakeholders and drive change is essential as systemic stress, security concerns, and climate risks converge. In addition to advancing technology, science parks also serve as spaces to explore new norms, policies, and social contracts.

Many innovations within Linköping Science Park have emerged precisely from these collaborations. The park combines strong tech expertise in image analysis, artificial intelligence, connected systems, and life sciences. As a result, it has paved the way for several notable companies. For example, Sectra, a Swedish high-tech firm founded in 1978, specialises in medical IT and cybersecurity. Similarly, Synthetic MR, founded in 2007 and also headquartered in Linköping, is a specialised software firm focusing on enhancing MRI scanning efficiency and diagnostic accuracy. Another medical technology company, Amra, was founded fifteen years ago and is also based in Linköping. This global health informatics and medical technology company has grown internationally, serving clients in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

“My experience is that the most interesting innovations arise at the intersections of different disciplines and industries. I believe that this type of technology and industry convergence is also the foundation for the next generation of innovations, particularly in precision health.”

An event in Linköping last year brought together professionals from life sciences, technology, academia, healthcare, and investment, demonstrating how regional strengths can be highlighted and strengthened. The region hosts about 80 life sciences companies, employing over 2,000 people in pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical technology, biotech tools, materials development, and related services, with a turnover of €278 million. Lena Miranda describes the region as a “diamond in the rough,” where focused gatherings generate new perspectives, encourage collaboration, and build partnerships.

She identifies three particularly critical factors for achieving breakthroughs in science park environments: talent, interdisciplinarity, and system innovation. The first factor is the competition for talent, especially international talent. Securing and retaining global expertise is vital for future competitiveness. The second factor is interdisciplinary collaboration, in which cutting-edge research, innovative companies, and end users, such as those in healthcare, integrate, fostering optimal conditions for innovation. The third factor, system innovation, demands moving beyond isolated pilot projects. Excellence in medicine or technology alone is insufficient; major breakthroughs require researchers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and decision makers to collaborate, ensuring large-scale implementation of solutions.

“Interdisciplinarity is not a marginal feature but a structural precondition. When cutting-edge research, innovative companies, and stakeholders like healthcare providers come together in the same environment, the best possible conditions arise for identifying relevant problems, developing solutions, and advancing them toward implementation.

“What risks slowing down the development is that increasing geopolitical polarisation and rising protectionism pose a major threat to innovation worldwide. Major breakthroughs almost always occur through collaboration between people, organisations, and countries. When borders close and collaboration is restricted, the flow of knowledge, mobility, and innovation risks slowing down.”

At the European level, Lena Miranda identifies a need for a more integrated internal market and improved access to capital, so that more innovative companies can expand from Europe as their base.

From a Swedish perspective, she highlights the skills shortage and the challenges of attracting and retaining international talent, driven by bureaucracy and regulatory barriers. She also notes a structural weakness in the public sector’s capacity to develop and implement new solutions. Many innovations struggle to gain traction within domestic market systems and incentives, a challenge that is especially acute in capital-intensive, regulated sectors such as life sciences.

“A long-term perspective, freedom, and room for risk-taking are necessary conditions for researchers, but many funding systems reward short-term results and measurable impact. I believe in models that combine strong, long-term research environments with shorter, more agile projects and pilots that can quickly take ideas forward once they have matured. Within IASP, I hope that we are contributing to making science parks around the world even stronger nodes in a global innovation system where cross-border collaboration drives technological breakthroughs and sustainable development.”

Currently, the global network reports members in 81 countries, connecting over 350 members and more than 115,000 companies. According to Lena Miranda, science parks are shifting from their traditional research roles to become regional orchestrators of innovation ecosystems. Their mission now focuses less on providing premises and more on connecting research, businesses, capital and stakeholders, and linking these environments internationally. However, developments vary globally.

“In Asia and parts of the global south, science parks are often integrated directly into national innovation strategies, where new environments are built with integrated functions for research, entrepreneurship, test beds, and urban development. For example, these countries, in response to local and national challenges, use inexpensive, accessible digital technology to quickly create solutions that address domestic needs and can be scaled up nationally or exported.”

In Europe, Lena Miranda notes the last decade has been characterised by cluster policy and regulation, but attention is now shifting toward competitiveness, capital supply, and scaling startups and scaleups as security and resilience move up on the agenda. Incubators, clusters, and science parks are key nodes for local mobilisation and for advancing both national and European goals.

“Examples of development on an international level are about connecting local areas of strength to a global innovation system, creating networking platforms for knowledge exchange, internationalisation, and policy development. But also the importance of educating decision-makers with, for example, in-depth white papers and, of course, participating in global conferences on deep tech and life science. Innovation does not occur in isolated ecosystems.”

Lena Miranda emphasises the importance of the physical environment and cultural context in enabling groundbreaking discoveries. Concentrating talent, expertise, and curiosity in one geographic area increases the likelihood of unexpected encounters, knowledge exchange, and new ideas.

“Science parks serve as arenas for in-between sections – that is, where professionals actively ensure that the right people meet, where ideas are challenged, and where promising collaborations are taken further. An increasingly important task for science parks is to connect their environments globally so that researchers and investors can move between innovation hubs. Through networks like IASP, local areas of strength in fields such as deep tech and life sciences can become part of a global innovation system.”

When discussing the urgent and complex topic innovation environments and the green transition, Lena Miranda says that today it must increasingly be viewed through the lens of security and resilience.

“For a long time, companies have been able to build their operations on relatively stable climate and environ-mental conditions. That stability is now changing rapidly. Extreme weather, supply chain disruptions, and increasing geopolitical uncertainty mean the climate issue is no longer just about sustainability, but also about robust societies and resilient economies. Energy systems, food supply, infrastructure, and industrial value chains need to function even in a more uncertain global environment.

“As the risk landscape becomes harder to grasp, the need grows for an innovative environment that can pool knowledge, test solutions, and help companies navigate the transition. Science parks can serve as neutral platforms where companies, research, and the public sector jointly develop new technologies, business models, and system solutions that both reduce climate impact and strengthen social and societal resilience.”

Regarding potential global breakthroughs we might see in life science before 2030, Lena Miranda identifies a clear trend: converging technologies that combine AI with biotechnology, medicine, and materials research. When data-driven medicine, genomics, and advanced biotechnology are integrated with powerful AI tools, the potential for developing more accurate diagnoses, treatment strategies, and individualised therapies increases dramatically.

“The next decade may bring significant progress in treating serious diseases, with cancer being a prime example. And in ten years, we could see headlines such as: ‘AI-designed cancer treatment cures previously incurable tumours’, ‘Personalised medications are prescribed based on your digital health profile’ or this one: ‘Biological drugs are manufactured in space – first factory in orbit inaugurated.’”

We already have great research within AI, we host academic super-computers, and Mimer, an AI factory, and groundbreaking research in electronics and biotelectronics in the region.”

Lena Miranda identifies Together as the guiding principle for the future of science parks and life sciences. The role of knowledge exchange practitioners is now more critical than ever:

“We must act as dealmakers by facilitating collaboration across sectors, bridging gaps, interpreting needs, and connecting people. We listen, understand, and recognise the value of each exchange while keeping sight of the broader context and the mutual dependencies that connect every part.

“We need to be holistic dealmakers at local, regional and national levels, while also fostering global connections with dealmakers from different parts of the world. As countries close their borders, our work in bridging research and innovation becomes increasingly vital. The greater system perspective, and the expertise we have developed by working in the in-between sections, is a profession itself and should be recognised as such.”