Abstract
The Northern Review 45 (2017): 57–75 https://doi.org/10.22584/nr45.2017.004This article focuses on the successful Swedish tradition in the field of innovation, but also discusses the flip side of an innovation culture that honours only radical innovation. Related to this tradition is a preference to measure innovativeness through patent data. Both these traditions imply a disadvantageous position for regions and companies located outside our large metropolitan areas. One problem relates to the interest in understanding how different degrees of innovativeness relate to different degrees of economic and social effects—a challenge that patent data, only to a very limited degree, addresses. This means that patent data disregards the fact that also incremental innovations “new to the region” or “new to the firm” might be powerful routes to a more dynamic development path, especially in more peripheral regions. To overcome such shortcomings, other measures and approaches are needed. One such approach developed and presented in this article is based upon Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist productivity index—employing Swedish longitudinal data, the article illustrates how they may be utilized to assess and make sense of regional technological innovation. Besides offering an unconventional picture of the regional innovation performance in Sweden, this methodological approach also identifies the northernmost part of Sweden (the Norrbotten region) as a region with its own path-breaking development trajectory. The article is concluded by discussing the region of Norrbotten as an example of a region that has traditionally capitalized on the exploitation and processing of natural resources and how such a region may diversify into new sectors using concepts such as related variety and smart specialization.
Highlights
Sweden has a long-standing track record of hosting an innovative economy
A study in 2005 revealed, for example, that the fifty largest companies in Sweden were all founded before 1970, and data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) regularly positioned Sweden as a low-performing economy
In February 2013 The Economist described the recovery and vitalization of the Swedish economy as “a silent revolution” represented by a long series of reforms and liberalizations of the economy: There can be no doubt that Swedens quiet revolution has brought about a dramatic change in its economic performance
Summary
Sweden has a long-standing track record of hosting an innovative economy. This is partly due to the fact that Sweden was not invaded during the Second World War and so instead could develop industrial innovations and large companies such as Alfa Laval (today it is still a world leader in heat transfer, centrifugal separation, and fluid handling); SKF (global manufacturer and supplier of ball and roller bearings, linear motion products, precision bearings, spindles, and seals); Sandvik (manufactures, for example, cemented-carbide and high-speed steel tools and blanks for the metalworking industry; equipment and tools for rock excavation, drills, and so on); Saab (serves the global market with world-leading products, services, and solutions from military defence to civil security); Scania (provider of sustainable transport solutions based on trucks and buses); and Volvo (manufactures cars, trucks, buses, construction equipment, marine and industrial power systems, and aerospace systems)—these are important drivers for a fast and steady growth of the Swedish economy during the hundred year period 1870– 1970. Institutional reforms and a reoriented policy stimulating entrepreneurship and innovation have been accompanied by new innovative companies entering the market This largely includes service-based companies in the music, media, and tourism industries, for example. Besides disclosing that peripheral regions such as Jämtland and Gotland, together with the capital region of Stockholm, come forward as leading innovative regions, this empirical test identifies Sweden’s northernmost region, Norrbotten, as a pattern-breaking region with a development trajectory very different from other Swedish areas This articles second theme is to address this northern region’s specific development conditions and its development strategy in order to explore regional smart specialization based on businesses and competence sectors that are related to but different from the region’s historical competitive advantage
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