Radical innovation for enhancement of the Swedish economy

Aims with our research programme

Globally, the economy is making a transition from a knowledge economy to an innovation economy. Moving to a knowledge economy directly impacts individual organizations like firms, universities and policy makers. It also affects the interactions and networks amongst individual organizations, locally and globally, and the dynamics of the overall system. Innovation is at the forefront of these debates, offering part of the solution to the Swedish (and global) challenges. Research based findings, as well as popular stories of firm growth, stress and have demonstrated empirically that firms need to emphasis innovation in order to develop and maintain their competitive edge. This has implications for long-term growth, and especially more radical changes.

This topic is particularly important to study in our increasingly global innovation economy. Firms today face evermore complex environments characterized by temporary rather than sustainable competitive advantages, shortened product life cycles, and new forms of competition among global competitors. This calls for an ability to create solutions of a more radical nature, which break path-dependency and integrate creative and highly innovative aspects into the existing routines and organizational mindsets.

Hence, the research programme analyzes different types of organizations, such as large firms, entrepreneurial firms and universities in terms of their challenges and roles in the shift to an innovation economy. Moreover, a spectrum of industries and technologies are included, so as to capture common mechanisms and issues related to management of innovation. The set of work-packages involve cases and quantitative studies cutting across mature as well as emerging sectors, where the role of small or large firms and universities may vary. In synthesis we will merge these findings to give implications on the Swedish situation.

In essence, the overall aims of the research program are to:

• contribute to the international research frontier on innovation and entrepreneurship
• interact with firms and practitioners on these issues
• inform teaching practices within the area of innovation and entrepreneurship at GU

You can find more information about the Sten A Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture here.