Next week Jonas Michanek and the Nigerian incubator ROAR will be taking over our Instagram account. So we took the opportunity to talk with Jonas Michanek the current incubator manager for ROAR incubator.
Jonas Michanek and ROAR Incubator
Hey, Jonas Michanek, can you tell us a bit more about yourself?
I am a serial entrepreneur and writer, that’s how I usually introduce myself in short. I started several companies, couple of NGOs and one foundation. Some of those companies are Idélaboratoriet, Food to happen and NEW, all of them have an innovation consultancy angle. One of the things that I have started that I am most proud of is a NGO called Social Entrepreneurship Forum (SE Forum). By now SE Forum is 15 years old and it’s headquarter is in Stockholm, but it works all over the world with social entrepreneurship. I have also written couple of books. One of them is the Idea Agent, which is a handbook of creative processes, which has been translated into 4-5 languages and is course literature all around Scandinavia. I have written books about entrepreneurship, about creative industry and how to develop creative industry on a regional level in Sweden and Europe.
If we are talking about my background I have a bachelor degree in Film and Literature, but I also have a master in Business Administration. I love sports, culture and business – I eat it all!
What is your assignment in Nigeria?
I am an Incubator Manager and I am going to help to develop the incubator ROAR Nigeria Hub. It has already started, but it is still in a very early phase. I am going to help with the creation of program, process, the organizational structure and make it an integral part of the Nigerian innovation eco system. It already has a great start because it is based in the great university University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN).
Can you tell me more about the people that you are working with and about the incubator?
ROAR has 16 teams working in the incubator. Great guys, everything from agricultural tech (how to make the processing of cassava more efficient), to social media apps (like hairstyles swapping apps), to more socially based tickets sales for events, they also have a team with a drone idea. It’s a bit of a mixture, but most of them are concentrated around high tech.
What are you going to show us next week on the Instatakeover?
I think we will show off the teams and they are going to share what they are doing. If they have some questions about Sweden, we can get an exchange and a conversation going. There is a big conference next week IDEON Science Park: Lunda Vision 1st International Workshop, so we will show some short videos from it as well.
Can you tell us a bit more about the conference and its focus?
It is going to be an innovation conference and it’s the first big conference about innovation and science park development in Nigeria. The Lion Science Park (that ROAR is a part of) will be the university based science park in Nigeria. There is going to be a big Swedish-Nigerian knowledge exchange, because there is about 200-300 people coming.
Do you think it’s important and useful to connect the entrepreneurs from Ideon Science Park and Lion Science Park?
I think that from the Nigerian side there is already a lot of interest to connect, but I also think that there are some companies at Ideon that would be interested in such collaboration. The Nigerian companies want to get more knowledge and understanding about tech and for the Swedish companies I think it’s useful to understand the Nigerian and in parts the African market. So, I think there can be great opportunities and exchanges with such collaboration.
Follow Jonas and ROAR on Instagram next week (link)
About ROAR incubator
More about Ideon Science Park and UNN here
