Textiles for the extreme: a technology transfer case study

[MUSIC PLAYING] The European Patent Office Podcasts bring you an insight into the technology and innovation shaping the world. Hello, and welcome to this episode of Talk Innovation, the podcast from the European Patent Office. Today, we will be discussing the success of the Swedish spinout company, Axiom. Their durable textiles started in a Swedish university laboratory, but are now being used on the surface of Mars. Can you imagine such a fantastic journey? And it would not have been possible without patents. My name is Stephanie Weber. I'm a member of the European IP Help Desk, and we've teamed up with the European Patent Office to bring you a new series of case studies centered around technology transfer. And this case is part of it. With these case studies, we aim to show how patents facilitate technology transfer from universities and public research organizations in Europe and help boost the market's success of novel inventions. So joining me today are two experts who've been intensely involved in the whole development and commercialization of this extraordinary, woven carbon fiber textile. Firstly, Andreas Matsmann, co-founder of Axiom and their vice president for marketing and sales. It's a pleasure to have you with us, Andreas. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. And then also joining us is Dr. Caroline Pump, who is an experienced IP professional. Caroline has a longstanding track record in successfully counseling university startups. She's been working with Axiom as a liar for more than 10 years. So you and Andreas know each other very well. And she's also a co-author of our case study about Axiom. Welcome, Caroline. Thank you, Stephanie. I'm so happy to be here today. So yeah, let's dive right in and start at the very beginning. So Andreas, what is this miraculous wonder textile all about? And what is it good for, actually? Well, it's a new form, a new textile architecture that enables weight saving of composite parts and could be anything from an airplane wing to an ice acoustic to a race car body. And even we're in there in district heating pipelines. So a pretty broad application area, but mostly about lowering weight of parts. And I mean, it's very much rooted, of course, in this weaving industry. So to be honest, I mean, if we think about innovations and weaving, it takes us back to the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. So I've been wondering, especially since the textile factories in Europe have been going down and closed in the latter part of the last century. So I've been wondering, how does a spinout company in this sector earn an award as a Swedish super gazelle, which is recognizing it as Sweden's fastest growing company in 2010, Caroline? That sounds like an amazing journey. It is. And I think that we have to remember that this isn't just any textile. This is textile with carbon fibers, which have very specific applications, as Andrea's described. So I think it's really cool to see that Oxion has chosen to be located in a town with a large history in the textile industry, but at the same time, doing something completely new and even being included in all these new applications to reduce weight, which is, of course, very useful when it comes to decrease fuel usage, et cetera, for those applications, but also to have this strength and still be so very thin. And maybe also you could tell us a little bit more about the journey and the development, also the journey of the business actually, for this textile to be applied in the aerospace industry. Was this your first go-to market? Now we realize that it'll take time to change skeleton in an aircraft. You have to be pretty well evaluated and scrutinized before you can do that. But it's always been on our long-term radar and one of our long-term goals. But it all started at the School of Entrepreneurship at Chalmers, an incubator, when we were presented to the idea that Nandan Kukar had about this new weaving technology, and we looked into what type of materials it could produce. And one of the application areas that we saw as an opportunity was composite reinforcement. But we also had all sorts of other crazy ideas of how we could use this type of technology. But we rather quickly focused in on carbon fiber composites. And then we said to validate the technology and to get it proven, we need to find something else than aircrafts, because that will take far too long time to get up there. So we quickly focused in on race cars and Formula One, specifically, because if they would apply the technology, we would have a great proof of that what we have is the best. They would use nothing else than the best. And they are extremely quick to evaluate new technologies and approve them. So those were our first customers. And following that, different types of sporting goods equipments, and then on the long term, different aerospace applications. And we're now flying in some applications and getting into more. And maybe Caroline, maybe you could add to that and bring in the IP perspective a little bit more, because as we've heard already, we have a platform of technologies here. We have a number of different application fields. And how is that reflected in the IP strategy of Oxion? I think that one of the important parts that differentiates Oxion from some other companies is that Oxion has always thought very strategically about intellectual property protection. So for example, they have always evaluated whether to protect the material as such, or the process for weaving the material, for example. And also considered, is the best way of protection to actually obtain a patent? Or should we, in some cases, maybe keep this as a trade secret, if it's something that's included in the process, for example, which might not be reverse engineered once you have the material. And I would also like to stress that this isn't just one invention coming from the university and protected by patents. And then you don't think about IP anymore. I think that Oxion has done a really good job with always keeping this in mind while collaborating with the customers and collaboration partners and always thinking about having non-disclosure agreements, having research collaboration agreements, and joint development agreements, depending on the situation. And also, all the time thinking about, how can we actually increase the protection of our IP? And how can we make sure that we have the optimal protection? And also, as Andrea said, being open to license as well. This isn't just so that everything should be kept within Oxion. There are also possibilities of letting others use this technology so that it can be even more of use. Yeah, and in addition to what Caroline just said, we were also very early on careful about how we use our brands and what we register in terms of brands to make sure that we could also deliver an additional value to our customers. And for example, the sporting goods industry, where we registered our product brand, Techstream, also into classes that our clients were in. So we registered Techstream for an ice hockey stick, for example, which made it more interesting for our customers to use our technical story together with the brand and then do a really ingredient branding strategy, which has also been fruitful, and especially in the sporting goods industry, maybe not so much on an aircraft seat, but it is of importance in there. It's more to consumer to consumer, isn't it? Because it's the consumers that knew about Techstream. It's not the companies necessarily. No, but of course, their technicians knows about it. And if a design engineer at NASA runs this carbon fiber bike with Techstream on it, it helps us. Yeah, absolutely. They get a good connection to the material and to the products. Yeah, I think from what you've told us so far, I do feel that Oxion is a very good example of how an IP strategy from the very beginning and as an integral part of an IP business is really sort of something that can catalyze and should be really closely interlinked with all the future steps. But I also saw what I found also striking in that case is that we have the proof of the technology, and then sort of that helps, but then helped to attract future investment and sort of then also help bolster the IP strategy that you had. Maybe you could, Andreas, trace a little bit the story of Oxion. And you also mentioned this contact with the Chalmers Entrepreneurship Centre. So a very specific, I feel, innovation ecosystem has been in place here as well and plays an important role in the success story of Oxion. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, Oxion would not have been without the School of Entrepreneurship. That's how we started. So we started as students at the School of Entrepreneurship. And as I said earlier, it was presented to the idea that Nanda had about this new wheeling technology. And when he came to us, he had two patents and a mock-up of a machine proving how this could possibly work. And then based on that, we went out to a bunch of different customers showing small pieces of material that we thought we would be able to produce. And we got a huge interest. Based on that interest, we first quickly changed business model and said, OK, we have such a big interest. Probably we should sell machinery instead. So then we did that for a little while. And then we quickly changed back. No, we need to sell the material because we need to be in full control. If we are to sell machinery and license out, the business will just be limited. So we switched back to again do the end product of a fabric, so a reinforcement fabric. And then when going back and forth between those different types of business models, we obviously spoke to different people in the value chain, which opened up opportunities also to license out the technology to other applications, which we said we will not focus on. But since we had our own target of producing material and go after those early adopters in racing and sporting goods, we quickly had to build our first machines and to prove that the IP that we have was something that could be translated into real equipment and real machine and worked. And of course, when you do that, you also learn a lot around your basic IP. So you could apply for additional patents and additional protection, and you gain a huge amount of know-how and knowledge. So then when we started to also gain interest for licensing our technology for other types of products, we could prove that it could be used for that by using our existing equipment. And that would not have been possible without those first early prototypes and machines. And Caroline, I mean, you are very familiar with this case, and I think Oksana is a great example of how, you know, the patents can support a successful technology transfer from university to the market. What do you think were the most critical ingredients, you know, in this whole transition? I think there were many things. I think there were access to different persons in the university ecosystem so that they could provide different kind of inputs. But there was no technology transfer office involved, right? No, that's correct. So the Chelmer School of Entrepreneurship is an education, but even though there is no formal TTO, there is still the support of the ecosystem providing expertise in different areas. So that was one part of it. I think another part of it was that the inventor doesn't necessarily want to commercialize his or her idea himself, and the inventor doesn't necessarily want to be the CEO of a new company. But at the same time, the inventor might be very happy if somebody else did that. So Nandan was luckily paired up with Andrea Smartsman and Henrik Blicker, who were at the time students, and they could spend many, many hours. They weren't employed at the time, but since this was a part of an education, they could spend a lot of hours to exploring different options, which the inventor might not otherwise have been able to do because the inventor was, of course, a researcher and had other interests. But I think also one important part of that was that even before the School of Entrepreneurship was introduced to Nandan, he had a friend of the family, Frederick Wienberg, who helped him secure his ideas and file patents. So he had a group of friends, business angel friends, that helped Nandan to apply for IP. And that is really the IP that made all this possible, because if Frederick had not been there helping Nandan to file those IP, but Nandan would just have published his research and his ideas, then there would probably not have been anything like Oxyon. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a very important point, that had Nandan not known that he should actually submit a patent application first, then you might not have been able to create all this value. And also, if you have published it, you could, of course, argue that, OK, then it would be available for anyone. But at the same time, who would invest in such a project if you didn't know that you could actually get to return on that investment by having that kind of patent protection? Yeah, absolutely. Andreas, how do you go about patent protection and IP management today? So now that we've looked back, maybe you could give us an answer. Yeah, we continue to have continuous IP strategy meetings where the top management of the company meets up. And we go through notice of inventions from our team and decide whether to go for a patent application, keep it as a trade secret, or that it is simply not interesting for Oxyon. So it's given back to the employee. And if they want to do something with it, they are free to do so. So I think we work in a rather structured way to evaluate potential IP that comes up from our everyday jobs and see how to make the most out of those, basically. Yeah, I mean, I find this really-- I think this is one of the important points in this case as well, as you mentioned, you as top managers and inventors are involved in this whole patent building process. And I think that's really essential and also, I think, an extraordinary example of how that could work. So if you had to give people one piece of advice, researchers, but also future technology entrepreneurs, what would that be? Is there a recipe for success to make successful transfer of a new technology to the market? Maybe Caroline? I think the first part is to really be aware of if this is something that you can get protection for or not. And then my other advice would be to use non-disclosure agreements, but don't rely on them fully. For example, I always say that if you have something that you think you might submit a patent application for, don't share it with anyone, even if it's under a non-disclosure agreement, because that is just a contractual protection. So I would rather recommend that talk about how it works, talk about what kind of problem it solves, but don't disclose the technical details until you have actually submitted a patent application. And Andreas, what would your recommendations be? Well, it's slightly contradictory to what Caroline just said, but it's rather go out and talk to people and really discuss what you have. And in that, though, it is all about discussing their needs and how the solution could help them support or to solve their needs, not sharing anything about exactly how the technology works or the details to any regards. It's what does it deliver? What does it do to help your customers with their needs? First, ask questions and then let them know that you have something that could help them. Then you're good to go. So Andreas, you mentioned quite a lot and underlined how important it is to listen to your customers and how that may lead to adapting and changing your business model and business strategy. And in that regard, we often hear about pivoting strategies. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about how you went about that one and about the role of that for the business strategy of all. I think what have always been important to us is to make sure that we adapt and listen to our customers and find how do we fine tune our business model. I think in the first year, when we looked back, we had changed our business model 24 times. In the beginning, it was big changes. We went from being a supplier of a technology to going back to a material, maybe doing a different type of material. But towards the end, it was small things in the business model like, OK, so who is really our target customers? And who do we target first? How do we get this up and running to prove that it is viable for our long-term customers? Finding Formula One race cars as a very early adopter of technologies and proving that what we have is the best. But still focus or keep our long-term goals in mind. So by being adaptive and being open to change your business model and reconsider what you do after you hear what the customers' needs really are, I think that is the most important thing in building a business. So speaking of customers and markets, it seems that Axion reached out to the global market from the very beginning, even though it's a small company in Sweden. So how does that happen? For me, it was always natural. I mean, I don't see why not when you have the opportunity of going global directly. You often hear about people telling you that you should go on to your home market first and try it out. But if the home market is limited in a small country, as Sweden, that is often the case, regardless of what technology you have, I don't see any issues going broader. If you find someone abroad that has the big need for what you have, then start there. That's what we did and it worked. That's excellent. And I'm afraid time's been flying. So thank you very much, Andreas and Caroline, for sharing these valuable insights and recommendations with us. And it's, in fact, with these recommendations that this podcast comes to an end. If you would like to know more about oxygen's fascinating technology transfer story and also business story, of course, or if you want to take a look at any of our other case studies, then please visit the European Patent Office's website at epo.org/sme. And if you enjoyed this podcast about technology transfer with a real-life impact, and we do hope, of course, you did, then tune in to our upcoming episodes in which we'll be spotlighting the other case studies, too. But for today, thanks for listening, and we hope you'll be back soon for another Talk Innovation podcast. Goodbye. Subscribe to the European Patent Office's podcast channel Talk Innovation at epo.org, or on your favorite podcast platform, Let's Talk Innovation.