Test and demo with scope on the business

Important results from the project

The purpose of the project was to increase the rate of digitization in Swedish industry with a focus on manufacturing SMEs and to find models and methods for SMEs, startups and scaleups to be able to use the test and demo structures (ToD) that exist in Sweden. The goal has been to, together with a number of innovation environments and testbeds, develop and test new methods to enable startups and scaleups to use ToD, as well as to create more commercial collaborative projects between manufacturing SMEs and startups for increased competitiveness of SMEs.

Expected long term effects

We have informed over 200 SMEs about the project´s possibilities, coached and performed needs analysis on 8 manufacturing SMEs, matched the needs of 5 SMEs against 20 startups, which resulted in 40 meetings, as well as 3 LOIs on collaborative projects. Furthermore, about fifteen companies in the target group have been piloted to a test environment. During the project, conceptual plans have been developed that address over 1,000 startups/scaleups in three digital technology areas. The companies testify that these collaborations would never have happened without this project.

Approach and implementation

The project is a collaboration with 10 project partners within science parks, incubators and research institutes. Together with selected test beds, project partners and innovation support actors, we have developed and tested methods. 51 in-depth interviews have been conducted with stakeholders and 8 needs analyzes with SMEs. The identified thresholds that exist in the ToD infrastructure today, the project has shown that they can be bridged and methods to get more SMEs to increase their digitization rate through collaboration with startups and scaleups have been tested and proven.