Where Local Needs Meet National Expertise

How can municipalities find new expertise and new solutions to complex challenges when the answers aren’t always within their own organization, or even within their region?

That question is a starting point for the collaboration between Movexum and Ignite Nordic within the Entreprenörs- och innovationslyftet (‘Entrepreneurship and Innovation Boost’ in English). Together, the two organizations are testing how local needs among Movexum’s innovation partners can be linked to national expertise, and how the path from challenge to expertise, solution, pilot, and business can be made shorter.

From Individual Efforts to Long-Term Capacity

“Innovation rarely happens within a single organization. It emerges when needs, people, knowledge, and new perspectives come together,” says Marit Finch-Westin, Project Manager Public Sector at Ignite Nordic.

The collaboration is therefore about more than finding solutions to individual problems. It aims to strengthen the ability of municipalities and other organizations to identify needs, engage with the market, and draw on external expertise.

“Individual projects aren’t enough to create lasting impact. We need to build relationships, knowledge, and ways of working that make it easier to move from an identified need to the right expertise, and on to a solution, a pilot, and eventually a business deal or implementation,” says Stina Skoglund, Project Manager at Movexum.

One concrete example is the work with the Municipality of Gävle on local food supply, based on an innovation partnership. Movexum contributes regional presence, relationships, and links to entrepreneurship and startups. Ignite Nordic adds national networks, experience from other municipalities, and expertise in needs-driven innovation and innovation procurement.

The work has contributed to an application for a SustainGov feasibility study that involves an innovative startup. It has also made visible which internal conditions and skills an organization needs in order to work with innovation over the long term.

Startups Bring Expertise That May Be Missing

A key part of the work is changing the perception of what collaborating with startups can mean.

Startups don’t only offer finished products for the public sector to test. They can contribute specialist expertise, new technology, different perspectives, and the ability to quickly develop and adapt solutions to concrete needs.

For a municipality, this can mean access to skills and creativity that don’t exist in-house. By sharing its needs openly and meeting companies with the right expertise, a municipality can explore new solutions together with the market.

Testing and piloting then become a way to put that expertise into practice. The municipality can try a new solution on a small scale and learn what works in its own operations. The startup gains operational knowledge and a real-world setting where its solution can be verified, developed, and adapted.

The Local Doesn’t Have to Solve Everything Locally

The best expertise or solution for a regional need isn’t always found in the region.

Through Ignite Nordic, actors in Gävleborg gain access to a national network of startups, scaleups, and innovation environments, along with experience from other parts of Sweden. Movexum, in turn, brings an understanding of local conditions, identifies needs, and builds the relationships and trust required to move new ways of working forward.

This is where the organizations’ roles complement each other: Movexum links the local level to the national, and Ignite Nordic can bring national expertise, experience, and solutions back to Gävleborg.

From Need to Expertise, Pilot, and Business

One central lesson is that innovation work needs to start with the need, not with a predefined solution.

The ambition is to develop, step by step, a working method that can be reused:

The goal isn’t simply to find a company that already has the exact product requested. Through scouting and matchmaking, a municipality can reach startups and entrepreneurs with specialist knowledge in the relevant area. When a startup’s technical expertise meets a municipality’s operational knowledge, existing solutions can be adapted, new uses can be identified, and in some cases new solutions can be developed.

In the longer term, there is also a clear link to the business climate and regional growth. As organizations get better at articulating needs, engaging with the market, drawing on external expertise, and creating room to test new solutions, demand for innovation becomes more qualified.

That gives innovative companies more opportunities to contribute their expertise, develop their offerings, and win new business. The public sector’s capacity for innovation and the strength of the business community become two parts of the same development.

Relationships Are Part of the Strength

Making this work takes more than methods and processes. It takes trust.

Movexum’s regional presence and relationships are complemented by Ignite Nordic’s national reach.

Together, the organizations can offer reassurance to municipalities and others who want to work with innovation but may lack the resources, experience, or networks to do so alone.

With access to experience, expertise, and solutions already tested elsewhere, each organization doesn’t have to start from scratch. Ways of working, pilots, and lessons learned can be shared and reused, which can reduce risk and shorten the path to change.

“When regional presence meets national networks, new possibilities open up. Municipalities like Gävle get access to more perspectives, more solutions, and more opportunities to turn innovation into real benefits for our residents,” says Eva von Schéele Frid, Business Developer at the Municipality of Gävle.

A Stronger Innovation System Creates More Opportunities

Ultimately, Entreprenörs- och innovationslyftet is about capacity building: strengthening the ability of people and organizations to work with innovation after the project ends.

For Movexum, the work is also a chance to further develop its role as a regional innovation broker: identifying needs and opportunities, and linking municipalities, companies, and academia with entrepreneurs, startups, and national innovation environments.

“By strengthening the link between regional needs and national networks, we can create better conditions for both the organizations with the needs and the startups. Real innovation happens when these perspectives meet,” says Marit Finch-Westin at Ignite Nordic.

The collaboration reflects an important shift: from seeing the innovation system as a collection of organizations to seeing the relationships and links between them as part of its strength.

When municipalities get better at identifying their needs and drawing on external expertise, more opportunities open up for innovative companies. When startups can apply their specialist skills to real challenges, the conditions are set for both innovation and new business.

This strengthens the public sector’s capacity for innovation, as well as the conditions for a more innovative and competitive business community in the Gävleborg region.

Entreprenörs- och innovationslyftet runs until March 2027 and is funded by Region Gävleborg and the European Regional Development Fund. Experiences and lessons from the work will be documented and used to develop ways of working that can continue beyond the end of the project.