Summary

The "new culture" has enabled Sweden to become a region of excellence in innovation. This atmosphere has attracted many global high-tech companies to the area. To leverage the full potential of this entrepreneurship revival, currently supported by a strong "fashion" to innovate, companies must understand the entrepreneurship culture of the region and train their employees to innovate across borders. Local management and personal networks play an important role for small companies seeking to expand in the global Innovation Economy, given the imperatives of speed to market and quickly attaining economies of scale. Even if hampered by the crash of the New Economy, Swedish entrepreneurs have been pioneers in this context and have progressed further along these lines than most of their European peers.

The speed of Sweden's transformation has been astounding. While Sweden's local innovations in mobile technologies have been exported all over the world, the country has retained its small-community atmosphere.

The economic and ideological crisis of the early 1990s presented itself as a window of opportunity for Sweden to initiate its path toward market-driven reforms , just in time for the mid-1990s worldwide boom in computing and telecommunications. Sweden's main asset throughout this development has been its intellectual capital. The excellent education of Sweden's population and the non-hierarchical culture at the Swedish workplace have enabled Sweden to develop faster than other European nations, and has made it the most important region in the world for mobile telecommunications today.

About the Author

This chapter was co- authored by Philip Heimann . He studied management at ESCP-EAP European School of Management in Paris, Oxford, and Berlin, has worked for the consulting firm A.T. Kearney and is currently preparing his doctoral thesis on linking corporate and regional innovation systems. Philip currently resides in Berlin, Germany.