Swedish Innovation: The secrets to successful disruptive and sustaining innovation

By Sandra Bourbon

Sandra Bourbon, who among other things has been named one of Sweden's most powerful figures in sustainability, has interviewed ten of Sweden's top innovators. The results of these interviews are presented in this book. The book highlights Sweden as a pioneering country when it comes to innovation. What does it really take to succeed in innovation? Which pitfalls should be avoided? What is the difference between disruptive and sustaining innovation? Answers to these questions can be found in the book.

The ten people that Sandra Bourbon has interviewed are:
Sofia Appelgren, founder and board member, Mitt Liv
Johan Arntyr, head of product development, Keolis
Henrik Berndtson, CEO, Blixten & Co/All Things Live Sweden
Joakim Cerwall, head of research and innovation, Traton Group
Pernilla Dahlman, CEO of the Year 2015, entrepreneur, leader and advisor
Medea S. Ekner, museum specialist and president, ICOM Sweden
Pelle Jakobsson, CIO, entrepreneur and digital generalist
Jessica Nordlander, Sweden’s Most Innovative Leader, COO, Thoughtexhange
Petra Sundström, PhD, VP and head of digital offering, Sandvik Rock Processing Solutions
Anne Årneby, CEO, Nordic Morning Group

“Swedish Innovation” contains over 100 inspiring and encouraging quotes from Sweden's leading top innovators. Innovators highlight the importance of diversity in the team as an important success factor. Some of the top innovators' very best tips for creating a successful innovation culture are: dare to take risks, be brave and never stop learning

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Aug 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9789180272483

Sandra Bourbon

The author Sandra Bourbon is passionate about innovation. She has earned a Master of Science in Engineering Physics and during her professional life she has mainly worked as a management consultant. Sandra Bourbon is frequently hired as a lecturer and inspirational speaker and often appears on TV, on radio and in newspapers. She has been awarded various prizes, including Super Talent and Super Communicator.

Book preview

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PART 1 – INTRODUCTION TO SWEDISH INNOVATION

Introduction to innovation

Sweden as an innovation country and pioneer

The Swedish Innovation Model

PART 2 – CREATING A CLIMATE FOR INNOVATION

01 Vision

02 Sustainable Growth

03 Culture

04 People

PART 3 – INNOVATE LIKE THE PROS

The Innovation Process for successful innovation

Free ideas

Collect ideas

The Prototype Loop

Integrate

PART 4 – FINAL TIPS

Avoiding pitfalls

Bonus: Innovation in times of crisis

The most important part of all

Presentation of the author

Presentation of the interviewees

Interview questions

Sources

INTRODUCTION

Prologue

It is mid-November 2020. Covid-19 is disrupting our world and we are right in the middle of a second wave. I am sitting at an empty desk in a dark and rainy Stockholm, Sweden, where the sun rises at eight in the morning and sets around three in the afternoon. This is indeed a dark time in many ways. Out of this darkness, however, I felt the urge to make things a little brighter. I have always been fascinated by innovation, partly in my role as a management consultant and partly because I have started and run my own companies for many years. But also because my second company, which I started together with my brother and husband, could definitely be classified as innovative. Using the latest machine learning technology, we endeavoured to create a completely new service to sell to investors. I had seen a need for this new service for quite some time, so I thought long and hard about how I could bring this sought-after solution to the market. After a chat with my husband and my brother on a weekend trip to Brussels, we decided to try to solve the problem and launched the company. Reactions came in immediately. It was not long before we were in the media, and both investors and potential customers worldwide reached out to us. But we had just one minor issue… Our prototype was not quite as finished as it appeared. Delivering to the customer required a huge effort in the form of manual work, which we failed to automate. The whole thing just became too complex from a technical standpoint. While the end result was a major customer delivery, I did not get enough support from others when it came to the real investment. Thus, we chose to close down the company in 2018.

And yet, as I look back today on our innovative attempt, I feel enormously proud. Proud that I dared to try. But I also wonder how much larger we could have grown had we persevered. In my view, the sky was truly the limit.

Sweden is an amazing country. After Silicon Valley, Sweden is the largest producer of so-called unicorn companies¹, a Swedish success made possible thanks to innovation. For everyone, innovation is critical for taking our world forward. It calls for brave individuals and organisations. The kind of courage I lacked when I chose to close down our company in 2018. But what could I have done differently? How do the most innovative people and organisations work when it comes to innovation? How do Sweden’s most successful innovators manage to get their ideas off the ground? I sought to investigate and learn more about that. Therefore, in darkest November 2020, I decided to investigate what I could have done to succeed. Since I did not have an assignment at the time, I thought I might as well engage in something productive. I started by reaching out to my network in Sweden and asked them to tell me about the absolute smartest thing to do when leading innovation. The response went beyond my wildest dreams. Indeed, I had the opportunity to hand-pick ten of Sweden’s innovation rock stars. With different ages and coming from various industries and backgrounds, they helped me answer the question, How can an organisation be the best at innovation? It immediately dawned on me that their wise answers were far too valuable to keep to myself – and so I decided to convey them to you in this book.

The focus of the book is on how you – as a leader – and your organisation can be the best at innovation. This book summarises and refers to my learnings from some of Sweden’s very sharpest innovators and depicts innovation in the context of my own career. You will follow the ups and downs of innovators and get their best tips on how you and your organisation can become more innovative straight away. With this book, I sought to create a source of inspiration while helping you get closer to innovators by sharing their personal stories. Moreover, you may use the book as a practical handbook on how to effectively lead innovation. Regardless of the size of the problem you plan to tackle.

With that, I wish you pleasant reading and hope that you will learn as much from these wise people as I did. I hope that this book will shed a little light on a very large area: innovation. With innovation, we can light a candle even in the darkest of times. For without innovation, the world simply stops turning.

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1 Unicorn company is a term used in the venture capital industry to describe a startup company with a valuation of over USD 1 billion.

Acknowledgements

What do two entrepreneurs, three CEOs, a museum expert, a head of product development, a COO, a head of research and innovation and a Doctor of Philosophy have in common? Besides being innovation experts, they have been kind enough to let me interview them for this book. This book would not have been possible without their contributions. I am incredibly grateful for all their help and all the wisdom they have shared with me while writing this book.

The ten people who have been interviewed are:

Interviews were conducted digitally during November 2020. During the interviews, I asked eight questions to the participants. Where needed, we dug deeper. Interviewees have been selected mainly based on their competence in innovation.

The book contains a list of the interview questions and a more detailed presentation of the interviewees in the end of the book.

Purpose and structure of the book

The book presents the conclusions and lessons I have drawn from interviews with ten of Sweden’s top innovators. It contains tools that you can apply straight a way to start to take the innovation in your organisation to the next level.

Insights are summarised in what I call the Swedish Innovation Model, which describes what you need to do to create a climate for innovation and drive innovation forward. In addition to the Swedish Innovation Model, the book contains over 100 quotes from Sweden’s top innovators, with concrete examples. Many of the sections end with a summary and valuable suggestions for moving forward. I hope that you will be as inspired as I was by Sweden’s top innovators to finally get started using their concrete tips, energy and wisdom. Part of the book covers accepted models and definitions from literature