Creating Regional Wealth in the Innovation Economy: Models, Perspectives, and Best Practices

Part III. Stockholm, Sweden“The High-Speed Globile Innovations Community”^[1]

Few countries in the world have mastered the transition from an industrial society to an information society as quickly and as successfully as Sweden.^[2] At the heart of the Swedish information and communications technology revolution lie Stockholm^[3] and the Stockholm suburb of Kista,^[4] which over the past two decades have become home to the world's most important center for mobile information and communications technologies (ICT).

The Swedish high-tech phenomenon developed in the early 1990s, when Sweden was fighting an economic and ideological crisis. The social democratic “Swedish Model” was considered to have failed, resulting in unprecedented levels of unemployment ...