Incubator: STING

Social entrepreneurship

With a curious mind and a soon finished master’s degree at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Mikael Erneberg strives to find solutions to societal problems and believes things shouldn’t be too easy. 

– All projects I’ve been involved in, including EVAM System™, have all had positive societal effects and this is one of my main motivations. Besides that, I believe that things should not be too easy. Working with complicated tech every day gives you the chance to always learn and this is really inspiring.

Self-experienced issue 

EVAM System™ improves road safety, working environment for personnel and shortens response times without adding an additional task for drivers as it integrates with current control systems. It is utilizing the Radio Data System (RDS) and several algorithms to effectively communicate vehicle to vehicle to give and early warning of an approaching emergency vehicle or traffic accident. The warning message is heard in your sound system and displayed as text no matter what you are listening to.

– The product was actually invented from a problem myself and one of my colleagues saw in one of the biggest cross roads in Stockholm City. We were together sitting in a car, enjoying the music and conversation we had, and suddenly we had an ambulance with blue lights and sirens turned on right behind us. We hadn’t noticed the ambulance in time and therefore reacted in stress by quickly moving aside into the buss lane causing a dangerous traffic solution and a delay for the ambulance. We started looking and noticed that the ambulance had the same problem with the car in front of us and the one in front of that one as well. We started counting and realized that the ambulance stood completely still for 20 seconds, just at this cross road, on its way to a critically ill patient. 

Mikael and his colleagues started to do some research about the problem and also found out that three fire fighters tragically passed away when working at a traffic accident site last year and 3958 accident related to road construction happened.

– This problem led to the development of the product EVAM System™. I guess the elevator pitch would be something in the lines of “Smart communication for better visibility and traffic safety”.

Stockholm supporters 

During the work with EVAM System™, the team has been connected to two different incubators: started off at KTH Innovation pre-incubator they got great support to do the initial market verification as well as building the first few customer relations, Mikael explains. 

– Since then we have moved on and is now a part of STING which has been great as a second opinion that we always can be open with, discussing our problems and how to solve them.

STING and KTH Innovation have also contributed with many practical resources such as help with legal, patents, financing and more, Mikael adds. 

During Sveriges Innovationsriksdag 2017 in April this year, Mikael received the ÅForsk Entrepreneurial Scholarship awarding Sweden’s most promising deeptech entrepreneurs. 

– I am extremely grateful for the Scholarship I have received from the Åforsk Foundation. The scholarship will mean that I can continue working fulltime with the business and therefore put my full attention at making it grow to something great. As a company we will by the help of the Åforsk Scholarship be able to continue develop in a quick paste and meet our set goals.