The development of the Swedish manufacturing industry is determined by the ability to firms' capacity for renewal. How does international firms located in the manufacturing industry in Sweden work with renewal? This will be investigated in the project Strategic Renewal Work in Swedish Industry, which has received 3 million SEK from Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency.
-We will analyze firm renewal in a number of large and medium-sized international companies, mainly within the manufacturing industry. But we will also pay attention to the increasing degree of integration with other players, not least in the knowledge-intensive service sector, says Inge Ivarsson, project manager and professor of Economic geography.
The researchers will study the firms' own abilities for renewal and how they have changed as well as relate these internal changes to corporate positioning in global value chains. They will also look into the extent to which firms' renewal efforts will take place in Sweden and abroad as well as what factors and conditions that affect this.
- We will also study whether the renewal process will affect the geographical location of core activities, especially with regard to R&D operations in Sweden, and if changes in R&D activities' geographical location patterns are the result of the availability of resources in the form of, for example, human capital, infrastructure or business policy initiatives in the regional economic environment, says Inge Ivarsson.
The project has received funding from Vinnova 2017-2019
Contact person
Inge Ivarsson, inge.ivarsson@handels.gu.se
Researchers who participate in the project: Inge Ivarsson, CG Alvstam, Martin Henning, Richard Nakamura, Ramsin Yakob. All researchers are members of the research group Centre for International Business Studies, CIBS.