Sweden is one of the most innovative countries in the world. This is a competitive advantage and an important piece of the puzzle in the challenges we face. At the same time, we are not that many. Dalarna is a small region in Sweden in terms of population, Sweden makes up 2% of the population of Europe, and Europe makes up 6% of the global population. I am therefore absolutely convinced that here in Dalarna we need to make greater use of the fantastic innovative power we possess.
At Dalarna Science Park, we are constantly looking for new ways to drive innovation. It is necessary for us to create new cross-border collaborations, try out a more exploratory way of working, test and evaluate methods and tools that lead development forward and help us solve the challenges of the future.
At the beginning of the year, we have launched several initiatives to find and inspire new innovations in Dalarna. The first took place on February 10-11, the Dalarna 24h Innovation Challenge, a collaboration between Dalarna Science Park, Dalarna University and Hitachi Energy. 32 students from 12 different nationalities gathered at lunchtime on Friday at our premises in Borlänge and were presented with the challenge "How will Hitachi attract 1000 engineers to Ludvika". They then had to work on this for 24 hours non-stop. Five teams were put together and in the end the best idea was chosen, which Hitachi now gets to choose how to manage.
Our second initiative is that we are currently scanning Dalarna for ideas via the "I have an idea" idea competition , a concept where anyone can easily submit an idea via www.jagharenide.nu. The hope is to spark thoughts about innovation, to find ideas in a new way that can become important innovations for the future and to support idea carriers so that the ideas have an opportunity to reach commercialization, which leads to new companies being started in Dalarna.
We also believe, together with Dalarna University, that if we are to generate more innovation from Dalarna, close collaboration with Dalarna University researchers and students is crucial. Our goal is for more researchers and students to reach Dalarna Science Park with their ideas. It is difficult to find statistics on how many innovations are generated by students and researchers at universities and colleges in Sweden. The closest we can get is how many innovations have received funding via the innovation offices that exist at most universities in Sweden. And to get an accurate picture, the statistics go back to 2019, i.e. before the pandemic, where almost 1000 innovations were registered and where large universities such as Lund University, Chalmers and KTH naturally top the list.
I think we have an exciting year ahead of us and before 2023 is over, I hope that we have identified many new innovations and that we have utilized and made visible some of the power that exists in Dalarna.
Finally, this year we will prioritize something that the pandemic of recent years has made difficult to implement, to be on site in Dalarna's municipalities with our concept Dalarna Science Park on Tour. In February, we were in Mora and met with municipal management, entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs and high school students. On March 31, we will visit Avesta and we are really looking forward to seeing southern Dalarna on site then!
