Updated: 10 November 2011
VINNOVA, Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, is Sweden’s innovation agency. Our aim is to increase the competitiveness of Swedish researchers and companies.
Our task is to promote sustainable growth in Sweden by funding needs-driven research and the development of effective innovation systems. To this end, we have 220 million euro to invest in new and ongoing projects each year. VINNOVA generally requires co-financing of all projects, which doubles the annual investments to around 440 million euro.
Funding decisions are made following public calls for proposals under VINNOVA’s programmes. Decisions are based on expert assessments and the suggestions of programme councils skilled in research, business and the public sector.
An important part of VINNOVA’s activities consists of increasing the cooperation between companies, universities, research institutes and other organisations in the Swedish innovation system. We do this in a number of ways, including long-term investment in strong research and innovation milieus, investment in projects to increase commercialisation of research results and by creating catalytic meeting places in the form of conferences and seminars.
All programmes are continuously followed-up and evaluated at their conclusion. Regular impact analyses are carried out in order to understand and learn from the long-term impacts of VINNOVA’s efforts.
VINNOVA is a Swedish government agency under the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications and the national contact agency for the EU Framework Programme for R&D. Some 200 people work at VINNOVA’s offices in Stockholm and Brussels. VINNOVA was established in January 2001.
