National Accelerator Program for Civil-Military Synergies

Important results from the project

LEAD is now ready to be an accelerator within Nato DIANA. The Armed Forces have also taken great steps in opening up the dialogue towards small innovative companies. Several start-ups within the program have received their first military deal, which is a great success. We also see as a decisive results that we have obtained a partnership with Brave1 in Ukraine and that we have created several opportunities for market verification via the contact network there.

Expected long term effects

That we continue to learn from each other and build defense capabilities faster in the long term. This allows us to take advantage of national innovation and technology before it disappears somewhere else. For companies, it is about creating business opportunities so that they can build strong growth companies for Sverige AB. Historically, Sweden is good at collaboration, so we are in a unique position to become the world´s best at civil-military acceleration for increased resilience.

Approach and implementation

The set-up was a programme similar to Nato Diana adapted to accepted companies. The companies were on site in Linköping 2-3 days per month. The different cultures and expectations that existed at the start of the programme from authorities and startups have been a challenge, but we see that everyone has learned a lot during the project. One lesson is that we should have spent more time on coordination at the start. The partnership with Ukraine was not planned but incredibly important.