Swedish Innovation E-Book

Sandra Bourbon

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 129

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

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

Leseprobe

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.

1Unicorn 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:

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

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 and research on innovation. Still, the book should not be regarded as a meta-study of all available research but as a concrete handbook with tips on how to lead innovation.

Swedish Innovation is a book for anyone seeking to lead or work with innovation. The book is aimed at those striving to push their organisation’s innovation work to the next level, no matter where on the journey they are. With this work, I aim to share valuable lessons regardless of whether you are the CEO of a large company or a project manager in a small organisation. The book can be read individually or used together in a group to take your innovation work to the next level. The focus is on how to get started and execute.

To give as broad a picture as possible, the interviewees have been selected with a focus on diversity. Accordingly, interviewees represent different industries, origins, ages and backgrounds to contribute with as broad a perspective as possible. Nine of the ten interviewees live in Sweden and one lives in Canada.

The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 focuses on providing an overall introduction to innovation. This is to set a framework that we refer to in the rest of the book. The first part also presents a summary of the insights from interviews with the Swedish Innovation Model. Part 2 presents the necessary conditions to create the necessary climate for innovation to take place. Part 3 describes how you can drive innovation in your organisation with the Innovation Process. Part 4 presents concluding tips with pitfalls to avoid and how innovation can arise in times of crisis. At the end of the book, you will find a more detailed presentation of myself and the interviewees, and a reference list.

Throughout the book, “a group of employees and leaders with a common purpose” is referred to as an organisation, regardless of whether it is a company, a startup company, a non-profit organisation, an association or another type of group. The Swedish Innovation Model can be applied to both the public and private sectors. In the book, the term “customer” does not necessarily refer to a paying customer but to someone who uses services or products and which, in some way, helps you realise your purpose as an organisation. This would include, for example, a patient at a healthcare facility or a museum visitor. The word “product” refers to both goods and services.

Well, that is enough for an introduction, wouldn’t you say? Let us move on to Part 1 to lay the groundwork for what innovation really means.

PART 1

INTRODUCTION TO SWEDISH INNOVATION

Introduction to innovation

Innovation is critical if you wish to survive as an organisation.

Johan Arntyr, head of product development, public transport operator

The word innovation is derived from the Latin word innovare. According to the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, it is a noun meaning “a new idea or method, or the use of new ideas and methods.” In modern society, we have innovated throughout the ages. But the rate of development is accelerating wildly and there will be a larger gap between what works today and what will work tomorrow. That is why innovation is more critical today than ever before. Jessica Nordlander, former Google employee and named Sweden’s Most Innovative Leader, says:

Previously, future and current viability for organisations were very similar; now, however, our future is extremely different from our present. The more different the future is, the more we need to innovate to keep up.

Jessica Nordlander, COO, Xoogler and Sweden’s Most Innovative Leader

Non-innovative organisations will quickly be overthrown and disappear. Besides the intrinsic value of allowing organisations to stay in business in the long term, innovation enables a better future – for society, the planet and humans. Innovation helps us tackle the big problems and is absolutely critical for our future. But how can you be innovative successfully? What can you learn from Sweden’s top innovators and what does Swedish Innovation really mean? Before we go into exactly how you can succeed with innovation, we need to lay the foundation for Swedish Innovation, which we do in this first introductory part of the book. We must agree on a definition for Swedish Innovation so that we are speaking the same language. Let us start by taking a closer look at the word innovation itself.

Innovation defined

The research field offers many definitions of innovation. It is also not uncommon to find different views within a single organisation of what innovation can mean. For example, where do we draw the line between business development and innovation? Does innovation need to be disruptive? Or is innovation yet another overblown buzzword?

To succeed with innovation, you must first reach a consensus on what innovation means in the context of your organisation. The same applies here if we are to speak the same language throughout this book. Without a common definition, it becomes difficult to pursue successful innovation work because innovation means different things to different employees. And in the worst case, the word innovation takes on a negative connotation that hampers its chances of success. Thus, let us agree on a more detailed definition that we can adhere to in the rest of the book, and that you can use to your advantage in the innovation work at your organisation.

In this book, we shall assume that innovations are something that is new or improved. We will use the same definition for innovation as found in the Oslo manual from the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) from 1997, which states:

“An ‘ innovation’ is the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations.”

Linked to the definition, the book will mainly focus on three types of innovation:

Product innovation

, understood as new or improved products, whether goods or services, which are distributed to the market, governments and society at large.

Process innovation

, understood as a production process that consumes fewer resources or incurs lower costs.

Organisational innovation

, understood as – by way of example only – the transformation of a classic hierarchical model with silos into a network-based organisation.

The classic definition of innovation often includes profit generation as its main and ultimate goal. In the book, we also use this assumption as our starting point unless clearly stated otherwise, for example in the case of social innovation, whose goal is instead to increase people’s well-being by identifying and meeting social needs.

Disruptive and sustaining innovation

To be clear about the type of innovation in question, we must also differentiate between innovation expressed as larger radical ideas and as smaller ideas. Larger radical ideas change the way we look at the world, while smaller ideas are often connected to improvements. Innovation research distinguishes between disruptive and sustaining innovation. The division into disruptive and sustaining innovation comes from the late consultant and author Clayton Christensen, who developed the theory around disruptive innovation. The Disruptive Innovation Theory has been mentioned as one of the most influential business ideas for the entire early 2000s.