IK The Four Leaf Clover 2024

Important results from the project

We made 62 decisions on the allocation of VFT funds during the period we used VFT 2024 (i.e. 2024-02-22 to 2025-04-01. The average amount of funds/decision: SEK 48,820 (excl. admin). We increased the proportion of Knowledge-intensive & DeepTech ideas to 85% of allocated funding (of which DeepTech increased to 71%) The proportion of decisions where VFT funds were allocated to cases with women as idea owners/champions was 27% during the period (previous period/project 36%).

Expected long term effects

We believe that the proportion of Knowledge-intensive & DeepTech ideas will continue to increase. Several funders of research are focusing even more on this, but also because we are doing more inspiration activities for this group of researchers. The latter provides an increased influx of cases to verify. We will see effects from the gender project we started in 2024 and which carried out activities in 2025 with the objective to increase the proportion of women who receive VFT funds.

Approach and implementation

IK Fyrklövern has a well-established and proven VFT process since many years. Since 2022, the VFT process has been divided into three phases (Nascent, Progressive and Advanced). The Advanced phase is for Knowledge-intensive & DeepTech ideas. The process is supported by tools and methods such as NABC, KTH-IRL, IAI and BMC but also by our CRM. We are increasingly, but cautiously, using AI in parts of our process. The fact that the funds in VFT 2024 ran out for us in April 2025 has been a problem,