Stina Lantz on Vinnova’s podcast “Innovation”

Many economic forecasts indicate that Sweden is heading towards a recession in the upcoming months. But how will the turbulent economy impact innovation and the current green transition? The newest episode of Vinnova’s podcast “Innovation”, dived into this topic and featured SISP’s VP and Ignite Sweden’s Program Manager, Stina Lantz, along with Sylvia Schwaag Serger (Lund University) and Göran Marklund (Vinnova).

According to Stina there are many different ways that Swedish startups are affected by these turbulent times but those within deeptech are especially impacted.

“During the pandemic, we observed that digital startups overcame the difficulties almost immediately, while it was a lot harder for deeptech startups with science-based climate solutions,” says Stina.

She indicates that one of the biggest challenges for deeptech startups is accessing customers.

“For these innovative companies, not being able to validate their solution with customers in an early stage can make the rest of their journey very tough,” explains Stina.

As a consequence of this, many startups had to put their plans for market entry and new recruitments on hold.

“We need to help startups, not only with capital but also by offering them the chance to validate their solutions with potential customers. Then the companies clearly need access to customers. Sweden procures 800 billion SEK annually. Only a very small amount of those millions go to innovative startups,” concludes Stina.

Click here to listen to the full conversation (in Swedish)