In the late 90’s Johan was a student at Chalmers and decided to dedicate his master’s thesis to ultrasound technology. There had been a lot of progress in the field, and Johan was interested in how the technology could be applied in the industry. The report was not going to be a forgotten piece on a bookshelf. The results were exciting and international companies became very interested in our work!

– Everyone said: “You have to keep going and develop this into a commercial product” it was great.

The results from our basic research is still the foundation of the products developed by Incipientus. We could measure an instantaneous velocity profile and combine it with pressure drop data to get accurate rheology in-line. The resulting rheogram contains more or less all the information you could want. Such measurements had only been done in labs and under very controlled and simple circumstances before. It was extremely hard, but Johan and his cowriters did it.

The other part of the exciting results was that they didn’t have to extract a sample, measurements were made directly in the process line and the results were instant. It was a big leap from how these sorts of measures and controls were performed before. Instead of extracting a sample, bring it to a lab, use costly equipment and then wait for at least 30 minutes before you could get any kind of result, you could have an instant result with touch-free technology.

– It was a huge improvement, and that is still the reason why people want to use our technology, says Johan.

Johan Wiklund first met Reinard Kotze at a conference in Switzerland. They were introduced since they both worked in the same, quite specific, field of pulsed ultrasound. Johan soon became the mentor to the Ph.D. student Reinhardt, and their work field-aligned even more. Together, and with a bigger team including Swedish, Swiss, and South African universities and research centers, they developed the results further. Johan and Reinhardt also developed their teamwork.

– I see our work as a puzzle. When we are solving a problem, we often have the corners of the puzzle but no picture to follow. I want to find loose parts of the puzzle and fit them into the bigger picture, while Reinhard is hardworking and persistent in building the puzzle from the existing pieces. What he is able to do with the data is magic. We really complement each other, and he is like a brother to me.

The spin-out process that would turn Incipientus into a fully working business was time-consuming. The crucial patents took years to finalize. Between 2011 and 2018, Johan led the spin-out project and together with Reinhardt kept improving and developing the Incipientus technology.

– The progress has to take time, but that is hard to understand in the beginning. We were skilled in our field but inexperienced in terms of business. We have learned so much along the way. I can easily understand why entrepreneurs like Elon Musk start new companies all the time; it is exciting to use all your new insights.

Johan has however currently no intention of starting any new companies in the near future, Incipientus has his undivided focus. Johan is very goal-oriented, determined to make every customer project a success.

– I love working with Incipientus. The technology and business are both very advanced. There are several parts that need to be connected and technical challenges to solve to make it user-friendly and to provide customer value – and that is what makes it fun!