Feasibility study - För-orten as a national decentralized network

Purpose and goal:

This prestudy aimed to lay the foundation for the establishment of a national network for innovation environments that support entrepreneurs, innovators and other change makers from economically disadvantaged areas in Sweden. We early on confirmed a strong desire from the innovation environments to be part of such a constellation and could therefore also begin to concretise a plan for it together with them.

The main purpose of the network would be to make use of ideas and innovation from all over Sweden, in order to make a positive change in society together. Expected results and effects:

Together we came up with a proposal including (amongst other things) what the core of the network´s activities should be and how we should start it up operationally etc. We see this as a big step in achieving our desired long-term effects: - More people from economically disadvantaged areas have the ability to solve the challenges that affect them

- The innovation environments that are active in economically disadvantaged areas increase their lifespan and ability to support innovators and other change makers - More innovative companies start up in economically disadvantaged areas Approach and implementation:

The prestudy was carried out through desk research, individual dialogues with Swedish and international innovation actors and a workshop series of 3 meetings with 28 participants; representing innovation environments from economically disadvantaged areas, financiers and other established actors from the innovation support system.

In a follow-up survey, all respondents stated that they were very or completely satisfied with their participation in the workshop-series and 9 out of 10 also stated that they made at least one new contact.