SPIS-Social Progress Innovation Sweden

In recent years, several innovation processes have been initiated by Umeå Municipality in collaboration with national and international actors. Those processes need to be coordinated to create synergies, support scaling up and implementation with the long-term goal of eventually establishing an internationally competitive local innovation system.

This local innovation system is an important part of the regional innovation system in northern Sweden. SPIS will establish a strong and sustainable cross-sectoral organization, which can coordinate ongoing innovation processes, initiate new processes that build on or complement the existing processes and act as a driving force for new initiatives.

Such a structure helps the municipal organization to meet future challenges by increasing the administrations' flexibility and ability to cooperate with civil society, other municipalities and regions, the business community and academia. A majority of these challenges are the consequences of global change processes, such as migration, labor market restructuring and climate change. Umeå's innovation platform will therefore have a strong international perspective.