According to a recently published article in the Swedish business journal Veckans Affärer, the Swedish Minister for Enterprise and Innovation, Mikael Damberg, has promised the creation of an Innovation Council during the spring of 2015 which is to be headed by the Swedish Prime Minister. Mr. Damberg states that a Council of this kind has been the wish of the Prime Minister for a long time in order to emphasize the importance of innovation and to strengthen the global competitiveness of Swedish companies. The Innovation Council will comprise, apart from the Prime Minister and other selected ministers, people from the industry and academia.
According to Mr. Damberg, one of the key issues of the Council will be the apportionment of government venture capital (GVC) to companies of interest. He believes that there is room for improvement of the current GVC administration, as a large portion of the capital is not distributed at all or distributed at a too late stage. He emphasizes that GVC plays an important role, especially in the early stages of R&D, when private venture capitalists may hesitate whether or not to invest.
In my opinion, the initiative of forming an Innovation Council is highly promising. I believe that the support from the Council may be specifically beneficial for small to medium-sized R&D companies which often need a financial push for their progress, whether this results in investing in new equipment, hiring more staff, releasing new products on the market or establishing intellectual property rights.
It will be appreciated that Sweden is regarded as an extremely innovative country. The renowned, New York-based Bloomberg site for business and financial market news publishes each year a ranking list of the most innovative countries in the world based on factors such as the countries’ R&D intensity, manufacturing capability, productivity, researcher concentration, patent activity, etc. In the annual rankings of 2012-2015, Sweden has finished fifth, fifth, second, and sixth, respectively, thereby passing the examination magna cum laude. Nevertheless, it is of vital importance to ensure that Sweden’s enormous innovation potential results in new products, services and intellectual property rights, not only for the benefit of the companies involved, but also of the country’s economic prosperity. Therefore, I believe that the most important task of the Innovation Council is to create and develop strategies such that it may constitute this momentous bridge between innovative ideas and economic growth.
Love Koci, European Patent Attorney
