Partners in research: Switzerland and Sweden
Beginning in 2012, the Swiss-Swedish Innovation Initiative (SWII) is a joint bilateral programme to assist two high-tech countries in tackling their perceived common challenges in maintaining competitiveness in their high-tech industries. The initiative is formed of a partnership of four organisations, namely Business Sweden, Vinnova, Saab and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI). The partners are subsequently supported by several industry organisations and academic institutions.
Speaking to horizon2020projects.com, Dr Magnus Ahlström, vice president of the Saab Global Innovation Program, and Stefan Klauser, project manager at SERI, outlined SWII’s major benefits, their thoughts on the next framework programme and why the initiative has been so successful.
How did the SWII develop?
Dr Magnus Ahlström: We are two small countries both facing the same challenges. We both have, and are dependent on, high-tech industry and need to be innovative and improve our production systems and processes to maintain the R&D facilities in our countries. Without a strong industry, our countries would face higher unemployment rates. So, being two world leaders in innovation, we believe that by joining forces, we can do good things together.
Stefan Klauser: The challenges we both face mainly stem from relying heavily on export industries. We can’t compete by offering cheap goods and services, so our products must be innovative and of the highest quality so that they can then be sent abroad.
What are the main aims of the initiative?
Klauser: The main goal is to have more bilateral, applied R&D projects. We really want our SMEs, researchers and academics to collaborate with partners from Sweden because we are sure that between these two countries, we have similar competencies and challenges; it is always worth looking outside of the box and meeting people from different areas with different experiences. I guess to have people from Switzerland and Sweden working together to solve common challenges is a good idea.
What are your thoughts regarding Horizon 2020 and other EU funding initiatives?
Klauser: If we consider Horizon 2020, which will address SMEs more profoundly than FP7, then we can consider designing or setting up multilateral initiatives. We are waiting on more details and the first calls where we might see whether we can also integrate Horizon 2020 into the SWII and this may finally lead to initiatives involving more countries. However, I believe that there is more co-ordination work needed with getting more partners on board and as we are a very small office here at SERI, we are unsure whether we have enough resources to deal with even larger initiatives.
Ahlström: Swedish companies in general were quite successful in participating in FP7. We continue to resource our needs for EU calls because that’s where the money is, yet EU programmes also tend to be very bureaucratic. In the future, we may look at joint platforms with, for example, Switzerland, wherever we find a possible collaboration base and see how we can develop a stronger platform in specific applications. By using Swede and Swiss collaboration, we see a sort of informal and unbureaucratic way of approaching problems and this could be the opportunity of a joint effort in Horizon 2020 through SWII.
Why do you think the SWII has been so successful?
Ahlström: I think that both countries are dedicated to working with high technology innovation in the future and consider the SWII as having the ability to discuss and form concrete collaboration projects. I think it’s important to find vehicles where we collaborate between government and industry and develop a network for both these ends. In our events and the way on which our SMEs use this initiative, we have several partners for each event that bring different organisations and SMEs to the table; I think that is also a successful way of working.
Klauser: I think that industry organisations play a crucial role in our collaboration because they are the ones that define the actual topics and the focus for our events and calls. Our co-operation is really designed around those events so that everything goes hand-in-hand and nothing is artificially developed by the governments of Switzerland or Sweden. Those are really things that fit the needs of our industry and I think that’s the main reason why this collaboration has been so successful so far. And still, we expect this collaboration to continue to develop more deeply during and beyond the SWII second call.
Dr Magnus Ahlström
Stefan Klauser
