Diverging innovation trends in Finland and Sweden

Important results from the project

The project compares trends in actual innovation output of manufacturing industries in Finland and Sweden 1970-2013. This opportunity is the result of the creation of two datasets, called SFINNO and SWINNO respectively, which are roughly based on the same so-called Literature Based Innovation Output method, or LBIO in short. The trends in the annual counts performance in short - for the two countries showed intriguing, if not suspicious, differences before the project started.This called for a careful investigation into the accuracy and comparability of the two datasets.

Expected long term effects

The revised innovation series are less volatile and show less of an impressive increase in Finnish innovations. They still show that Finland catches up with Sweden and actually forges ahead in innovation counts per capita after 1990. Swedish innovations decline severely in the 1980s, driven by a poor performance in machinery and metals. The ICT sector explains part of the Finnish catch up after 1990, but not all of it. Both Finnish and Swedish innovations benefitted vastly from public stimulation (funding and research), but the Finnish more so.

Approach and implementation

The first year was spent on data harmonization in four steps. 1)Additions to cover the 1970-2013 period 2)Deletions of certain types of innovations 3)Selection adjustments based on source types 4)Harmonizing coding and data formats The second year we produced three scientific papers, aimed for international peer-review journals: Paper 1.Innovation and Industrial Renewal in Finland and Sweden 1970-2013 Paper 2. Impact of innovation policy on firm innovation. A comparison of Finland and Sweden, 1970-2013 Paper 3: Innovation networks in the Finnish and Swedish forest industry