Catarina Berglund, Program Manager at Automation Region, is representing one of the organizations deeply involved in driving the IndTech focus nationally to strengthening Sweden’s positions within Industrial Technology. We met Catarina at the IndTech lounge – a collaboration between Automation Region, PiiA and Svenska Mässan. Strainlabs was represented at the adjacent Innovation Hub together with a few other tech companies and Ignite Sweden.
Automation Region had the “Join the IndTech Movement” message all over the exhibitions – great to see for an IndTech startup like Strainlabs. What is going on in the IndTech movement in Sweden today?
We started pushing the term IndTech some two years ago – arguing that IndTech is an important industry for Sweden but then it was largely unknown. Now we see that the term is more known and works well to bring together both the “Tech scene” and the industrial side as an umbrella for new types of constellations and collaboration. It is now more widely recognized that the installed industrial base of equipment in industrial Sweden can increase the pace in a sustainable and competitive way if we draw benefit from the new technologies and digitalization. This breaking point is a very exciting place for new companies to come in and deliver value.
A great example is that with the valuable networks we create enables smaller startup and scaleup companies to reach the relevant parties more easily. Industrial leaders of course but also small to midsize companies, governmental organizations and the public sector. We must not forget the huge benefits there as well with the development.
What is the IndTech focus for Automation Region now would you say?
Together with our partners our main task is to connect the nodes or hubs across Sweden to make it easy to find the relevant collaborations. We often talk about value chains but we think ”value networks” instead. New constellations and collaborations are needed. To find high technology early-stage companies that offer new solutions is a very important portion for our mid- to large size industrial companies and we have many good examples of this happening. Just look at the interest for Strainlabs demo at this exhibition – we constantly need to think new and develop what we do together. Sweden is an highly collaborative country and IndTech is a flagship area for us.
We have a few areas of priority and of course sustainability is a constant focus in everything we do. Another area is the importance of attracting talent, we need to think in new ways outside of the traditional recruiting base. In general, we look closely at all conditions that affect success. When it comes to research and development Sweden has slowed down the investment pace in recent years and we need to get the ambition back up again to enable the close collaborations with our institutes and academia necessary to keep our strong position in industrial technology. We just got a new government in Sweden and our job is to be there early and address this topic.
