Sweden is a country with high innovation and an ideal when it comes to community building and welfare. In the report Rethinking government - doing things differently, we can get our positive beliefs about Sweden confirmed – and at the same time realize that we share the enormous challenges in areas such as public sector with our competitor countries.

The study was conducted through interviews with government representatives in 17 countries and has been combined with an extensive study with 1200 decision makers in business life.

The challenge in the economic turmoil is to balance and stabilize state budgets. That we know. In addition, we need to find solutions to key issues such as finding the right skills and create innovation, says Jan Sturesson, Global head of public sector within PwC, who wrote the report. [¹] Only the ones who are capable of reforming the public sector will be going strong into the future.

To think in new ways and engage in change is not what everyone most associates with the institutions of society. One conclusion why this is the case is that the competencies in these organizations that are supposed to drive change are very similar. Another reason is that we tend to apply existing proven solutions instead of using new approaches that fit the problems as they look today, or tomorrow. The individuals and the groups who are expected to provide innovative thinking are in most cases the same age, have similar training, has a similar frame of reference and the same idea of how to solve problems. And it's hard to lift yourself by the hair.

In fact, everyone knows, and this has been shown by research time and again, that if people in a team have different skills and perspectives, the result is more unpredictable and creative than if the people in the team are very similar in training and background.

Frequently, voices are heard in the debate that say we must become better at hiring people with foreign background in Sweden. Sure, there is a point of view. But why not turn things around? How can we meet the needs for new thinking, new approaches and new skills? Answer – By using all available expertise in the country. By creating heterogeneous teams. By daring to create new approaches instead of choosing from the old. By engaging people with training and experience from other countries.

We do not presently do this to the extent that we should. It is sad that we are unable to engage people who are well trained and experienced professionals from other countries to contribute to the development we need. Take for example the so-called Stockholm paradox. Stockholm is seen as a city that is characterized by creativity, tolerance and diversity. On the other hand, the region is not able to use the human capital available in the immigrant population. This is especially true in the public sector.[²]

Think "Innovation through diversity"! There is a great need for regeneration and development in many parts of Swedish society. At the same time educated and talented people with foreign backgrounds are unemployed in Sweden. We need to get better at solving challenges in the community where development strength, ideas and capacity are lacking. We do ourselves a great service by bringing together organizations with considerable needs for development with unemployed people who have foreign qualifications.
The result is that new perspectives, new thinking and new solutions arise. Welcome to a surprising future.

¹ www.psrc.pwc.com
² Använd kompetensen, Stockholms läns landsting (TMR), Rapport 5:2011

Worldwide, people are protesting against high food prices. In India, the Minister of Agriculture was beat up in November during a protest against high food prices. Food prices in India have risen by 80% in six years. One factor contributing to the rising prices is India's exports of food.

In Bolivia and Peru, local people in many places can no longer afford to eat quinoa though it is grown around the corner. Prices skyrock due to world demand. And the quinoa is sold to those who pay best.

Currently, we are simply not producing enough food. According to the UN, world food production needs to increase by 70 percent by 2050. We must also take into account that many countries due to climate change will produce less food in the future.

As a consequence, responsibility for a higher production of food lands on countries like Sweden. But here we are moving in the wrong direction. According to LRF (Federation of Swedish Farmers) food production is decreasing in Sweden since 1995 and Sweden depends on imports of most agricultural products except cereals. The value of imports for consumption in 2008 amounted to 88 billion, while the export value accounted for 48 billion. ¹

This is the reason we run a project in Uppland to try new crops that could become the new food. There are a number of crops that are healthier, better for the environment, making high returns, which are more economically viable than many of our current crops.

There may be several reasons why we do not grow these crops here. Some things do not grow in our latitudes. Another reason is tradition. A third reason is that we know too little about these plants.

At the same time, there are a large number of people with foreign qualifications in agriculture in Sweden that can contribute with knowledge, new ideas and their own labor. But these people are in alarmingly high rates unemployed. Today, there is virtually no interface between farmers and foreign-born persons who are looking for rural occupations.

In our project, we hired seven people from different parts of the world with specialized knowledge in agriculture and food. None of them had during their previous years in Sweden ever set foot on a Swedish farm. Here we have a fantastic resource that can contribute to the development we need in Swedish agriculture. We have one million hectares of uncultivated arable land in Sweden! More crops and more people in the fields will produce more food.

We need to give everyone who lives in Sweden an opportunity to contribute to this development.

¹ Svenska bönder är redo att möta en förväntansfull marknad (in swedish only)

(Currently in Swedish only)

Vi medverkade 19 okt 2011 på RUFS-konferensen som Stockholms Läns Landsting (SLL) anordnade angående läget i Stockholm för att tala under rubriken Rekrytera kompetensen.

Vi har jobbat i tio år med olika samhällsutvecklingsfrågor och slås av hur länge vi i Sverige har diskuterat samma saker och gjort utredningar i ämnet mångfald utan att man egentligen ser någon skillnad. Vi kan nog prata om det i evighet och fortsätta kartlägga hur det ser ut och göra fler och fler planer utan att något händer.

Att ha en mångfaldsplan är viktigt, men varför ser man så lite handling och verkliga resultat? Är det just för att vi pratar utan att ta frågan på riktigt allvar? Kan det vara så att vi inte haft tillräckligt med uppmärksammade incidenter i samhället på olika nivåer för att vi ska ta mångfald och diskriminering på riktigt allvar? Eller kan det faktiskt vara så att vi ännu inte förstår att mångfald är en möjlighet i både affärslivet och samhällsbyggnaden och inte bara något som vi pliktskyldigt och av etiska skäl behöver jobba med som en sidoaktivitet? Det tror och hoppas vi så klart inte men frågan är berättigad.

Vi presenterade hur vi jobbar med mångfald och innovation. Utifrån vår erfarenhet av olika samhällsutvecklingsprojekt på både landsbygden, i staden och i olika miljö och tillväxtsatsningar så vet vi att en av de mest effektiva metoderna för innovation är att jobba utifrån ett mångfaldsperspektiv. Om offentliga sektorn tar sina mångfaldsplaner på allvar och inser behovet av nya grepp i samhällsbyggandet så finns stora möjligheter att göra skillnad både vad gäller smartare samhällslösningar i kombination med ökad delaktighet från alla grupper i samhället. Det vill vi gärna vara med och bidra till.

Ett lästips om samhällsinnovation är boken ”Kuwaharas dass och andra lösningar på stora samhällsproblem” av författarna Stefan Fölster och Fabian Wallén.

Se mer om läget i Stockholm i rapporten ”Använd kompetensen!” som lanserades i samband med eventet.

After a nice but unusually short summer vacation (by Swedish standards) we are entering the second phase of the project, “Innovation Countryside”, which we started in June.

After working several years on innovation strategy and management using tools that can be best characterized as “in the box,” OpenEye is now working “outside the box,” applying tenets of design thinking to address some of the trickiest challenges facing Sweden.

The basic idea behind the Innovation Countryside project is innovation through diversity. Read more here about our take on the importance of team diversity for innovation, and the role of a country’s foreign-born citizenry in furthering economic development in general. For Innovation Countryside, we simply engage a diverse team of agronomists who are recent immigrants to Sweden to create new opportunities for Swedish farmers and the Swedish food industry.

The development challenge is as follows: How might we create the local production crops that are currently imported and also adds value from a financial, health and ecological point of view? To address this challenge we have been coaching a diverse design team through stages of need finding, field studies and exchanges of experience with key users who are impacted by the challenge. We are also coaching work a team of farmers who are involved in the initial prototyping of new product and business ideas.

Ultimately, the Innovation Countryside project will deliver solutions for a food-based cluster for new crops and improved food products, produced in Uppland, an agriculturally dominant region just north of Stockholm.

Even though we’re only half-way into the project, we want to share two big observations:

1. We are absolutely thrilled to see how many interesting and cutting-edge ideas a design team can come up with in just a month or so. Our design team consists of people from Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Palestine, Peru, Japan and India. This diversity, coupled with a process that stokes innovation, has created a set of ideas that are just amazing, and heretofore not thought of. For finding radical new ideas and new paths it’s no doubt that deploying diverse design teams is the way to go. Also it is impressive to see the how engaged the team has been in this work even though there are some language barriers between team members and challenges in understanding Swedish conditions and culture.

2. There is an increased interest on the part of Swedish business organizations and government agencies to enhance entrepreneurship in Sweden to create new companies, diversify the business landscape, and improve the economy. Typically, the entrepreneurs who bring new ideas to the table are vetted through very traditional channels: innovation labs, incubators, investor networks, or perhaps government funded initiatives. We see a new avenue, filled with extremely talented people who have been traditionally barred from those streams due to cultural, language or other barriers. We are seeing first hand the tremendous capacity of people who don’t know about these resources, can’t access the time and materials needed to develop their idea, or lack the experience to convince market movers of the greatness of an idea – especially not if you face language barriers, has no track record and try to sell a radical innovation. We believe we can to turn the tide for new venture generation by taping into undiscovered talent that will generate new ideas to address long unsolved problems.

And by the way, not only do we believe we have planted something that will grow innovation-wise, we will actually grow a very spectacular vegetable that, apart from being tasty and healthy, actually grows in the snow! It’s just amazing. Stay tuned during our winter months to see pictures of a white and green Swedish cropland. We post some information about our progress on a blog (only in Swedish).

Svensk miljöpolitik har byggt väldigt mycket på de 16 miljökvalitetsmål som beskrivs i miljömålsportalen. Till dessa miljökvalitetsmål kopplades delmål som utgjorde det operativa verktyget för måluppfyllelse. En uppfattning som delas av de flesta är att miljöarbetet hittills inte givit de resultat man hoppats på. Det är fortfarande så efter ca tio år med miljökvalitetsmålen att de flesta mål inte är uppnådda och många anses svåra att nå.

Man har genom fördjupade utvärderingar vunnit nya insikter om att på flera områden är återhämtningstiden längre än man tidigare trott. Dessutom är det inom vissa områden svårt att få nyckelaktörer engagerade och att dra åt samma håll. Några röster har också sagt att miljökvalitetsmålen är svåra att förhålla sig till och för samhällets aktörer att utgå ifrån i sitt eget miljöarbete.

Som ett led i att åtgärda det som man uppfattar som brister har regeringen alltså skapat ett nytt mål – generationsmålet. Man säger att det nu introduceras ett modernare och mer effektivt miljömålssystem. Generationsmålet har funnits med som begrepp i miljöpolitiken sedan sent 90-tal men tidigare inte haft någon tydlig roll. Nu förväntas generationsmålet bli vägledande för miljöarbetet på alla nivåer i samhället. Målet lyder:

Det övergripande målet för miljöpolitiken är att till nästa generation lämna över ett samhälle där de stora miljöproblemen i Sverige är lösta, utan att orsaka ökade miljö- och hälsoproblem utanför Sveriges gränser

Detta är ambitiöst. Man kan se det som att man gjort det så stort och svårt att det blir en vision och näst intill orealistiskt. Alternativt kan man se det som att man nu tar ett seriöst grepp för att hitta de viktigaste utmaningarna och fokusera på de omställningar som verkligen är nödvändiga för att vi skall kunna nå det uppfordrande generationsmålet och därmed miljökvalitetsmålen. Fler röster har sagt att vi måste bort från myndighetsstyrning och låta generationsmålet koppla ihop alla våra politikområden och engagera lokal och regional nivå samt inte minst näringslivet.

Ytterligare en nyhet är att man nu ersatt delmålen med etappmål. Det nya med dessa etappmål är att det är regeringen som efter behandling av en nyinstiftad parlamentarisk beredning tar beslut om dessa etappmål med mycket kortare intervall än som var fallet med delmålen.

I vilken utsträckning detta kommer att lyckas återstår att se. Med den inblick som vi skaffat oss, genom vårt samarbete med Naturvårdsverket i den inledande fasen runt generationsmålet, så känns det absolut som att det finns stora möjligheter till ett förnyat miljöarbete med större genomslag i samhället.

Vi har själva redan börjat tänka samhällsomställning...

Reform pressures are increasing for organizations that aim to improve society. Delivering services in the context of today’s economy is a challenge. Many leaders within organizations are asking themselves, “what’s our best move?”

To answer that question it may be useful to think first about what not to do. It will not be enough to apply existing solutions to the emerging needs of today. What leaders will need to do is replace yesterday’s practices with tomorrow’s today. One route to achieving this is applying design thinking.

The term “design” has a long, historical association with the art, architecture and product manufacturing sectors. But to say that those are the only domains of the activities known as “design-like” would do the term a disservice. Lately, design thinking is gaining ground as a tool for developing new, innovative solutions in the social sector, providing opportunities for improving people’s lives in ways never thought of before.

A key tenet of design thinking is its adherence to a human-centered approach. Design thinkers believe that the best way to create new approaches to difficult challenges is by starting with the people who experience them.

The best explanation of design thinking I have heard that of Richard Boland and Fred Collopy, who compare having a design attitude versus a decision attitude. To have a decision attitude is to solve a problem by selecting a solution from a known set of alternatives. A design attitude, on the other hand, strives to uncover what is unique in a situation and to invent a solution by seeking user input, prototyping, testing and refining.

”The design attitude … is concerned with finding the best answer possible, given the skills, time, and resources of the team, and takes for granted that it will require the invention of new alternatives. …The decision attitude is in the unrealistic position of assuming that good design work has already taken place, even though that is usually not the case.”

Managing as Designing by Richard Boland and Fred Collopy, p. 6

Stefan Fölster’s and Fabian Wallén’s Kuwaharas dass och andra lösningar på stora samhällsproblem is currently on the bookshelves in Sweden. They ask, are there new approaches to current social issues? The book offers a number of examples of people who have used their imagination and entrepreneurship to deliver surprising solutions.

Leaders can open the potential to new alternatives by engaging in a design thinking approach.

Innovating successfully is becoming increasingly important for organizations and agencies with both business and social agendas.

This is probably not news to you, but innovation rarely occurs as flash of inspiration and then boom—all of a sudden you’ve solved some complex challenge. Innovations require focused work and an environment to further the work, and constructive attitudes on the part of participants toward risk.

In the EU report “Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010”, released February 1^st this year, Sweden is ranked as the most innovative country in the EU. Among its strengths mentioned in the report are a well-functioning higher education system and a favorable research environment. However, Sweden’s weaknesses include an overall low investment in research and development within businesses and relatively few small and middle size enterprises (SME) that are considered “innovative.”

Sweden’s small, homogeneous population could be contributing factor to its relatively limited innovation capacity. For SMEs in particular, it’s a challenge for them to access individuals with competencies and experiences that provide key new views. The increasingly sought-after disruptive or radical innovations that SMEs crave rarely emerge from having an inside-the-company perspective. There is research in the field which suggests that organizations which contain homogeneous groupings have a tendency to accomplish innovations that could be categorized as rationalizations. Unfortunately, SMEs have few resources to invest in activities that stimulate innovation. Nonetheless, these companies are often as dependent on being innovative as any large company for success.

What if there were ways to create something like “innovation on demand” for SMEs and other organizations who would like to incorporate newer, fresher, more creative ideas into their business, and in turn improve their bottom line and possibly society?

Below are three fundamental principles for innovation on demand that we would like to recommend. Implement these to improve your chances of finding the viable new ideas you need.

1. Be clear about your challenges and needs
By understanding the challenges, needs, or, as we like to say, the root causes of what’s blocking progress, we enhance chances to find viable and feasible ideas. Thus analyze and depict the underlying reasons for existing conditions. What may have been viewed upon as only a problem may actually provide a unique opportunity or competitive edge. Involve stakeholders that best can elucidate issues addressed. Draw illustrations to simplify for stakeholders to relate and contribute with new assumptions, views and experiences.
Get inspired by checking out different approaches to conceptual modeling. We ourselves are hooked on cause and effect maps and practices marked by design thinking, wherein focus on the user is key.

2. Compose a heterogeneous innovation team
“If we truly value innovation, then it follows that as a society, as a corporation, as any institution, and as individuals, we must wholeheartedly embrace diversity”
These are the words of Shirley Ann Jackson, President IBM Watson Research Labs in New York. Diversity may be the most powerful, yet least understood and applied, force for innovation. Diversity includes all kinds of characteristics – from gender, nationality and religion to color and sexual orientation. Talented and committed people with diverse perspectives are your best source of ideas.

3. Develop many ideas. Ideate!
As we’ve already argued, an innovation is not one single thing or isolated revelation. Rather, an innovation comes to life through the creation of ideas that are built upon each other in different ways and directions. “The more the merrier” is pretty much the straightforward formula. In its simplest form, this is quite easily achieved by asking questions. Try to propel ideas centered on user needs and realities.
For instance, take a break for a couple of minutes and enjoy Steven Johnson’s inspiring TED talk about where good ideas come from.