Stockholm
Region and Regional RTD Policy
In international rankings Stockholm is regularly among the top regions when in comes to innovation, creativity and competitiveness indicators. Once a year the Nobel ceremony marks Stockholm as the centre of science in the world. Stockholm has considerable industrial and financial muscle with a large number of multinational corporations and numerous small and medium-sized entrepreneurially-minded companies. Stockholm is the leading Swedish region when it comes to density and numbers of science and technology-based companies. As a market, Stockholm has become an important hub in the rapidly expanding Baltic region, as well as being an integral part of the growing EU market. There are some 20 universities and university colleges in the Stockholm region, with varying educational profiles and roughly 90,000 enrolled students, including 4,000 visiting students. The region is also rich in initiatives to promote science and entrepreneurship.
There is a large number of national and regional Research and Development (R&D) Institutes and private initiatives in the Stockholm Metropolitan Area. Many of them are located in the vicinity of the Royal Institute of Technology and Electrum in Kista. The institutes work in close co-operation with Swedish companies on R&D projects but also put much effort on facilitating and fostering start-ups and new firms. Recently a comprehensive consolidation has taken place among the industry research institutes and many of the institutes are under the umbrella of IRECO Holding AB, a limited liability company owned by the Swedish government (55%) and the Knowledge Foundation with the objective to promote Swedish industrial growth and international competitiveness through ownership and support to industrial research institutes.
The Stockholm region has four officially proposed competence clusters: IT & telecom, life sciences, financial services and environmental technology. In addition the field of creative industries is growing rapidly. The most important challenge for policy makers is to strive for a coherent innovation strategy based upon the triple helix model, i.e. cooperation between industry, academia and public policy.
Stockholm Region’s Pilot Cluster: Kista Science City IT-Cluster
Stockholm, and in particular Kista Science Park, has a leading position in wireless technology and mobile applications & services. IT and wireless technology are well integrated with traditional industries such as finance and banking, automotive, pharmaceutical and retail industries. The Stockholm region has become a major centre for the TIME sector (Telecommunication, Information Technology, Media and Entertainment). Of the 100,000 companies in the Stockholm region almost 25,000 belong to the TIME sector and employ one fifth of the overall private sector employees in Stockholm, i.e. 130,000 persons. 60 percent of all employees within the TIME sector in Sweden are situated in the Stockholm region.
Kista is Swedens largest business area with more than 650 companies mainly focusing on ICT and one of the worlds leading ICT clusters with several multinational companies, world leading research and an increasing number of students within the ICT area. Some of the companies like Ericsson, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are large multinational companies with business world wide, while other companies are newly started with just a few employees and only focusing on the local market in Sweden. Ericsson, with over 9,000 employees in Kista, was the first company to establish here in 1975. The company has a leading role in the cluster development together with the city of Stockholm, the Royal Institute of Technology and the real estate owners in the area. The IT University of Kista has more than 3500 students and the number is increasing again after a couple of years with a decrease of interest. In Kista there are approximately 1,100 researchers both in research institutes like Acreo and in larger companies like Ericsson and Nokia.
There are more than 28,000 persons working in Kista and in a future vision decided by the City of Stockholm, Ericsson and the Royal Institute of Technology there are plans to increase the number of employees to nearly 60,000 within ten years. One important step to achieve this is to speed up the number of new companies within the ICT area. Kista has a regional responsibility for innovation and to increase innovation the Stockholm Innovation and Growth was started in 2002.
An overall target for Kista is to create a science city with city values. Therefore lot of effort is invested to create an environment that attracts people to come here even after office hours. In short the target is to create a city that lives 24 hours a day where people both want to work, live and get entertained.
Further information: www.kista.com