Business with Sweden
The Swedish business climate is known for flat organizational structures and managers who are not afraid to roll up their sleeves. Business in Sweden is constantly evolving, becoming more competitive — but always with people and the environment in mind.
The future of Swedish business is said to lie primarily in knowledge-intensive industries, where Sweden can take advantage of its advanced technological development, sophisticated infrastructure and high general educational level. Information technology (IT) and biomedicine are two such knowledge-intensive sectors in which Sweden has been among the global leaders for years.
During the 20th century, what is often described as the "Swedish economic miracle" occurred. In the space of a few decades, a poor agrarian country was transformed into one of the world's most prosperous and sophisticated industrial nations.
The foundation for this rapid growth was northern Sweden's enormous wealth of forests, ore and hydroelectric power, combined with a long series of ingenious Swedish inventions such as the roller bearing, the gas-powered beacon and the telephone, to name only a few.
Even today, this kind of engineering brilliance remains at the core of the Swedish business sector. Look at IT inventions like Skype, that enables people to call each other for free over the internet, and the online music service Spotify.
by: Johanna Ögren & Gustaf Brickman
Playing for Change is a major Swedish initiative that seeks to promote social enterprise focusing on the right of children and young people to play. In 2009, it issued a call for creative and innovative social entrepreneurs around Sweden to come up with ways of making the world a better place. Out of thousands of respondents, they selected eight winners.
by: Stephen Whitlock
When it comes to responsible economic development, Sweden is already a world leader. Hoping to showcase its expertise at the World Expo in Shanghai, Sweden arrives in the Chinese harbor city with a message focused on three keywords — innovation, sustainability, and communication.