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The purpose of this paper is to shed light on co-creative approaches for place innovation in an Arctic town, based on the relocation of Kiruna’s city center in northern Sweden. Three cases of co-creative innovation processes in Kiruna are investigated and compared: an R&D project about local perceptions and visions of attractive urban environments; an R&D project about norm-creative design principles for inclusive and attractive urban design; and an R&D project about cross-industrial synergies for city center attractiveness.

The study’s research design encompasses a comparative and participatory approach. The comparative approach implies investigation and comparison of three cases of co-creative innovation processes in Kiruna. The participatory approach implies joint development of new knowledge by researchers and local actors. The data consists of participatory observations of workshops and qualitative interviews with local actors.

The study reveals that the studied processes have harnessed the city center relocation as an opportunity to make Kiruna more attractive to residents and visitors, by using the co-creative approaches of Living Lab, Now-Wow-How and Norm-creative design. These approaches have enabled experts and local actors to jointly identify excluding patterns and norms in the relocation process and to envision inclusive and attractive (re-)configurations and (re-)conceptualizations of the future Kiruna.

The results add to the academic strand of inclusive urban transformation, by providing insights into co-creative approaches for re-imagining an Arctic town in times of industrial and social change. New insights are provided regarding how the geographical, industrial and cultural identity of an Arctic town can be harnessed to envision new configuration, content and communication that is attractive and accessible for a diversity of residents and visitors.

The results highlight the potential to harness Arctic and rural characteristics in the promotion of urban attractiveness and public well-being, especially when combined with co-creative identification and transformation of excluding norms and patterns.

The results provide new insights into how co-creative approaches may facilitate innovative and inclusive renewal of towns and cities in the Arctic and beyond.

In Sweden, gender mainstreaming policies have a long political history. As part of the national gender equality strategy of the Swedish forest industry, the ten largest forestry companies committed themselves to gender mainstream their policies. Limiting the impact of policies and the agency of change, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the varied and conflicting meanings and constitution of the concepts, the problem and, in extent, the organisational realities of gender mainstreaming.

In both, implementation and practice, gender mainstreaming posse challenges on various levels and by analysing these documents as practical texts from the WPR-approach. This paper explores constructions of gender and gender equality and their implications on the practice and the political of gender mainstreaming in a male-dominated primary industry.

The results show that the organisations themselves were not constituted as the subject of the policy but instead some of the individuals (women). The subject position of women represented in company policy was one of lacking skills and competences and in the need of help. Not only men and the masculine norms but organisational processes and structures were also generally invisible in the material. Power and conflict were mainly absent from the understanding of gender equality. Instead, consenting ideas of gender equality were the focus. Such conceptualisations of gender equality are beneficial for all risk concealing power structures and thereby limit the political space for change.

By highlighting the scale of policy and the significance of organisational contexts, the results indicate how gender and gender equality are constitutive through the governing technologies of neoliberal and market-oriented ideologies in policy – emphasising the further limiting of space for structural change and politicalization within the male-dominated organisations of Swedish forest industry.

The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge about the mechanisms behind, and the implications of, varying involvement in digitally enhanced employee-driven innovation (EDI) by studying how a firm integrates a web-based tool in the organization of its EDI process.

Based on a qualitative in-depth interview study with managers and employees at one high-performing and one low-performing office of a global IT firm, a critical discourse analysis was performed. It explored how the EDI discourse was produced, distributed and consumed in relation to the web-based tool for collecting and selecting employee ideas.

The results demonstrate that the production of the innovation discourse by the top-level management, which emphasizes client satisfaction rather than employee engagement, restricts the employees’ utilization of the digital platform that distributes the discourse. However, at the high-performing office, employee participation is ensured because the local managers act as co-distributors of the digital tool.

The single case study design limits the generalizability of the results, but is nevertheless relevant for understanding the mechanisms and implications in similar contexts where web-based tools are used to enhance EDI processes.

The study provides practical insights into the importance of local management’s active promotion of digital tools in order to ensure employee involvement.

The study contributes to the EDI literature by identifying some mechanisms behind and the implications of varying employee involvement in digitally enhanced EDI processes.

Various studies indicate that men and certain masculinities are ascribed a normative role in innovation policies and innovation networks. This article aims to analyse which feminist approaches have been used in order to articulate and perform resistance to the hegemonic “masculinist” discourses on innovation, applying the concept of paradoxical space coined by Rose. The paper specifically focuses on Swedish gender and innovation research and development (R&D) projects, as Sweden has been depicted as progressive in the theoretical and practical development of this field.

The paper analyses feminist approaches used in the “margin to the mainstream” of innovation R&D. The analysis is conducted on research and evaluation – where the authors have been involved as “outsiders within”. The empirical material is gathered through literature searches and interviews.

The paper concludes that three approaches to feminist resistance, outlined by Rose, are used in the analysed material: movements between the centre and margin; reaching beyond representation and definition, and paradoxical spaces used as separatism. A fourth approach – using paradoxical space for recognising differences in terms of, for example, “race”, class and sexuality – is mainly lacking in the material, except in a few cases. The theoretical contribution lies in clarifying and delineating the occurrence of different approaches to the application of a gender perspective on innovation R&D, and in highlighting the implication for gendered innovation discourses in policy, research and practice.

Implications based on the analysis include the need for applying different approaches to feminist resistance against the masculinist central discourse on innovation, since different approaches are able to perform resistance against the different aspects of the masculinist discourses. The findings indicate that policy support and specific calls in the field of gender and innovation are necessary for the development of this field. Further, policy support should enable various approaches to feminist resistance.

The article contributes by providing an overview of programs, projects and studies concerning gender and innovation R&D in Sweden – thus delineating the forefront of the scientific and practical field of gender and innovation. It also links feminist theories to practical efforts, identifying different approaches to feminist resistance towards a masculinist central discourse on innovation.

The cluster concept has had great influence on national and regional policies for growth and innovation in Sweden since it was introduced in the late 1990s. This article argues that while the cluster concept has been relatively uncontested on the national policy arena, it has been contested on the regional arena regarding its meaning and proper use. We scrutinize this contestation as a matter of power struggles between different actors concerning the preferential right of interpretation of which organizations, areas and innovations are to be considered as important in policies and practices promoting clusters. The article thus highlights the tricky balance act performed by policy makers and civil servants when deciding on prioritization versus diversification. The article contributes to the further development of both policies and theories on growth and innovation by empirically mapping and discussing the impact of power struggles on clusters as pathways to innovation. In order to exemplify these struggles, our study draws upon two separate studies: one of how the cluster concept has been used as a policy measure over time on national and regional level in Sweden (Säll, 2012) and another of the organization of alternative clusters by Women Resource Centers throughout Sweden (Lindberg et al., 2012). Comparing these two cases makes it evident that the perceptions of clusters that harmonize with prevalent hegemonic discourses of growth and innovation have to large extent enjoyed the preferential right of interpretation, however are at the same time challenged by alternative conceptions of clusters. When highlighted in relation to existing research on innovation, growth policy and power relations, the two empirical examples stand out as interesting cases of how innovation policy has been introduced as academic theory, translated to a political context and subject for contestations that has changed the initial meaning of the concept. Ultimately, it is concluded that the pathways to innovation in the Nordic countries are paradoxical, due to the paradoxical pathway of policies and practices to evoke innovation and change as the same as preserving traditional regional power structures.

Innovations have hitherto mostly been acknowledged in terms of new technical products in both theories and policies on innovation. The public support to the transformation of research results and new ideas into new goods and services, provided by the state as well as by several universities, has thus primarily been adapted to the conditions prevalent in technological and manufacturing industries. Since the Nordic countries have a long tradition in policy and research focusing social aspects of societal development, there ought to be a potential in supporting innovations emanating from the social sciences as well. Social science innovations could then better serve to solve the great economic and social challenges identified on the global level by OECD, on the European level by EU and on the national level by the EU member states, not least the Nordic countries. But as the public support system for innovations is adapted to technological standards and conditions, what possibilities are there to promote and enhance ideas coming out social science driven innovations? Based on an empirical example of a specific social science innovation, this article explores how existing support systems could be adapted to enhance innovation in other disciplines and spheres outside or beyond technological ones. The empirical example emanates from a university in the middle parts of Sweden, where the Grants and Innovation Office engaged themselves in a process of intense adaptation of their services to meet the need of a social science researcher who presented on the idea of an innovation based on research on the area of gender equality. The article describes this particular innovation process step by step from research result to commercialized service using a participatory research design, autobiographical method and experimental method. Based on this empirical example of realizing a specific social science innovation, this article outlines a model for analyzing and promoting and recognizing these type of innovations. The model enables an analysis of the innovation process by its power dimensions, affecting the prospects of realizing the original idea and pinpointing key aspects for promoting social science innovations.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the theory of gender bias in innovation studies, to illustrate the gender bias of innovation studies by using empirical means and to suggest what is needed to reduce such bias. Previous studies on innovation have primarily focussed on male-dominated industries. These studies have been biased and hence unable to capture the range of innovations covered by theoretical definitions.

An innovation survey was conducted among entrepreneurs in the traditionally “female-labelled” health-care industry, avoiding the “male-labelled” concept of innovation itself in the questionnaire. The authors endeavoured to ascertain whether there is a significant difference between males and females in terms of innovativeness. Quantitative analyses were used to analyse the results and draw comparisons with an ordinary innovation survey.

Using a gender-aware operationalisation of innovation, no significant difference in innovativeness was found between men and women. This suggests that more attention is needed to correct the prevailing gender bias in innovation studies. A research model is presented to further understand the gender-biased operationalisations of innovation. Each of its three dimensions has a clear impact upon perceived innovativeness: the gender-label of the sector studied, the gender-neutrality of the operationalisation used in the study and the gender of the actors involved. All dimensions should be taken into account in future innovation studies that aim for gender neutrality.

Operationalisations for measuring innovations are usually biased. Therefore, women appear less innovative, which, in turn, leads to less visibility.

Gender perspectives are very seldom employed in innovation studies. In quantitative studies of this sort, it is even rarer. Our empirical evidence from the quantitative study shows the urgency of the need to broaden the concept both in academic, political and public debates. This is not the least for efficiency reasons in resource allocation and public policy.

This paper utilizes the concept of innovation as a form of methodological starting-point in order to analyse the gendered meanings of marketization in Swedish universities. The purpose of the paper is to scrutinize how the concept of innovation is produced in Swedish universities, and how these versions of innovation are gendered and related to different understandings of gender equality.

The analysis departs from a critical perspective to studies of gender equality and is anchored in a critical policy analysis approach – the “what's the problem represented to be? Approach” developed by Bacchi. This approach is used in the analysis of interviews with top-level leaders at two Swedish universities and how they perceive innovation. The results are related to a governmentality framework in order to explain the gendered innovation discourse in academia.

One of the main results is that innovation is represented in a broad way when discussed at a more abstract level. However, when the discussion becomes more concrete and also related to a gendered understanding of the researchers actually turning their research results into innovations, this broad representation of innovation shrinks. The analysis also shows how a governmentality framework both explains the inevitability of innovation and the difficulties of working for political change for women in the academy.

In analysing innovation as produced instead of taken for granted, this article puts forward a critical understanding of innovation, both in relation to gender and to the inevitability of de-politicisation processes of the neo-liberal audit culture in academia.