Cluster manager portrait: Trine Winterø, MedTech Innovation Center

Trine Winterø is not the type who wastes her time or resources. What she does has to work, and the people whom she involves have to be able to contribute. Time recording and other red tape is not her cup of tea.

”If we are to create value, it has to be more than just a drop in the ocean. We have to think growth. After all, we must survive – Denmark must survive”, she says smiling and flinging her arms about.

Trine Winterø is the CEO of MedTech Innovation Center (MTIC) in Aarhus (DK). MTIC is an organisation that helps ensure that the health technological companies in the Central Denmark Region utilises the commercial potential, and the MTIC operates as a bridge-builder between the public and the private business world.

The organisation is based in open and bright rooms together with other companies in the Aarhus suburb, Skejby, and the commune with the private business world is not a coincidence, as the pulse of the house is an important part of the work environment, Trine Winterø, who, with her black skirt, short hair and focused appearance, radiates commitment from the very first handshake, explains.

However, neither she nor the other five employees of the MTIC are in the office from Mondays through Fridays. In fact, they have to synchronise their calendars to make sure that they can all meet at the same time once in a while. In order to assist the companies in developing their health technological products for the international market, the MTIC employees must be in the centre of things.

”We are working closely together with the companies that we assist, and we often work on the same level as the employees. It is a different way of doing things but it means that we can slide in and contribute in all the phases of the process instead of just proportioning – and that makes a big difference”, says Trine Winterø.

She explains that as product development in the biotech and medtech industries is a long and immensely capital demanding process, it is even more important to do the right thing from the very beginning of a development process.

The right people for the job

English terms like impact, issue, change management and stakeholders are a natural part of her otherwise Danish sentences without her giving it much thought.

”We focus on the company and the product, which is why we spend a lot of time figuring out what a company really needs, and then we find the right people for the job”, Trine Winterø explains.

Finding the right expertise for a specific job requires knowledge of the industry and a wide network, which is why Trine Winterø and her co-workers at the MTIC spend a lot of time up-dating their knowledge on what happens in the industry. They are participating in conferences all over the world, which gives them valuable knowledge on which products that are being developed and in which direction the industry is moving.

”When we preach to the companies that they must make products that are relevant to global commerce, we have to understand the essence of just that right now. Otherwise, they might be developing yesterday’s solutions, losing both time and money on it”, says Trine Winterø.

Network and lobbyism

A lot of the days in Trine Winterø’s calendar are fully booked with network nurturing and lobbyism.

It often takes place abroad or in Copenhagen where she was making her career moves until she became the CEO of MTIC in 2008. On average, she spends a couple of days a week in the capital city. If she is going there for a meeting, she systematically books the rest of the day with other network meetings.

”You have to be there and maintain the network. Otherwise, you will lose the sense of it. Especially when you are not located in Copenhagen, you have to have a good network in both the financial sector and in the central administration, as policies and strategies are formed exactly there. The large companies in the industry are also located in Copenhagen, so you have to act on that. When you are far away, you are not automatically included, which is why you have to be systematical instead”, says Trine Winterø.

Naturally, the local business community and other key persons should know about the MTIC, but in reality, neither Trine Winterø herself nor the MTIC is on the lobby agenda. Companies and growth are. But because Trine Winterø for several years – among other things as the manager of Tectra, the unit for technology transfer under the Capital Region of Denmark – has been working in the field between the business world and the university, she knows the importance of a solid network.

Other than that, according to Trine Winterø, it all comes down to saying yes when you are asked, because this gives you the possibility of meeting new people – and that opens new doors.

”Even if accepting a seat in the proof of concept panel under the European Research Council is costing me a lot of weekends, the benefit of meeting with people from all over Europe on a regular basis and by this obtaining a kind of a working community constitute a super network. Meeting just once gives you different sense of each other”, says Trine Winterø, who among other things is a member of the boards for The Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation and the Business Innovation Fund and furthermore recently invited into the government’s new growth team for health and welfare technology.

The important service gene

As a cluster facilitator – or the director of an organisation like the MTIC – it is, however, not enough to have a fantastic network. The trick is to make it available to others, Trine Winterø believes.

”In order to really help the companies succeed with their products we must be really good listeners and figure out where in the network we can find the right competencies – and, of course, we must have a good service gene.”

Trine Winterø’s own driving force when working with not least the small and medium-sized high technological companies, which are very close to her heart, is partly her conviction that those companies are the ones to make the wheels of Denmark turn, and partly a sincere urge to share some of all that knowledge she gathered over the years.

”It is all about reaching that point in your life where you want to share the knowledge you have gathered and to help others reach a higher level – and it is about having that feeling that it has to be possible to do things in a different and more direct way”, says Trine Winterø.

So far MTIC succeeded with just that.

Among other things, a project, in which Horsens Hospital in a new way is collaborating with private companies on the development of new health technological products directly targeted the clinical work at the hospital, is now being implemented in other hospitals. And Trine Winterø’s hopes are high in that respect.

Facts:

MedTech Innovation Center in Aarhus is a part of The Central Denmark Region’s focus ’Business and Health’ (’Erhverv og Sundhed’). Focusing on commercialisation and implementation of new ideas, inventions and research results, the MTIC is to make sure that The Central Denmark Region exploits its potential within health technology.

The MTIC was founded in 2008 as an independent foundation on a 3 year grant from the Growth Forum (Vækstforum) and the EU structural funds. The foundation recently received funding for three more years.

Trine Winterø, since 2008 the CEO of the MTIC, has since 1999 worked with estimating, financing and developing companies and products based on research. Among other things, she was the innovation manager of the Symbion Science Park, the director of the Symbion Management and of the venture capital company SEED Capital Management I/S and the manager of technology transfer unit Tectra under The Capital Region of Denmark.

She is a member of the board of the The Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation and the Business Innovation Fund and the government’s new growth team for health and welfare technology.

She is an MSc in food science and technology and holds a PhD in molecular genetics from The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University.