About Us

Forum for Social Innovation Sweden Forum for Social Innovation SwedenForum for Social Innovation Sweden is a national knowledge and collaboration platform for social innovation, with five nodes based at five different universities in Sweden: the University of Borås, Luleå University of Technology, Malmö University, Umeå University, and Örebro University. We work to strengthen social innovation as a force for society through research-based knowledge and learning processes, methods, and various collaborations between academia, the public sector, civil society, and the business community.

Our Offerings

At Forum for Social Innovation Sweden , we Forum for Social Innovation Sweden across sectors with many stakeholders in various types of processes and projects. How we contribute depends on the societal challenge—its needs, context, and goals. A common thread in all our work is that we connect stakeholders, knowledge, and perspectives to strengthen the long-term conditions for co-creation aimed at societal change. See what types of support we offer and explore how we can collaborate.

Learn more about our services

This is how we create value through knowledge and collaboration

Forum for Social Innovation Sweden's is based on the premise that complex societal challenges can rarely be solved by individual projects, actors, or methods. They require long-term learning, cross-sectoral collaboration, and structures that make it possible to build on experiences over time.

Our value as a platform for knowledge and collaboration lies not primarily in individual activities, but in our ability to connect knowledge and research with practice and collaboration over time, and to create the conditions for social innovation to have an impact on research, policy, and society.

Projects and Collaborations

The projects Forum for Social Innovation Sweden and in which Forum for Social Innovation Sweden participates are used both to drive development in specific areas and to build shared knowledge about social innovation at the local, regional, and national levels, as well as in Sweden and Europe. The projects bring together research, practice, and policy, and through this work, new solutions can be developed, and experiences can be tracked, analyzed, and applied further. Lessons learned from individual projects form the basis for our knowledge and methodology development, as well as for our efforts to disseminate these to a wider audience across different sectors of society.

Projects and Collaborations

Methods and tools

The methods and tools developed within Forum for Social Innovation Sweden are based on both research and practical experience. The aim is to make complex knowledge useful and research accessible and applicable through concepts, models, and various types of methods and tools that can support social innovation. These methods do not provide ready-made solutions. They help you understand and critically reflect, work creatively or in a structured manner with processes, navigate various relationships and norms, and support collaboration with different target groups in social innovation work.

Methods and tools

Doctoral students who took the course "Social Innovation in Theory and Practice."

Meeting places

Platforms that enable different people, organizations, and sectors to come together are a central part of our work. Through seminars, workshops, learning processes, and conferences, Forum for Social Innovation Sweden creates forums where stakeholders from different sectors can meet and develop a shared understanding of both societal challenges and possible paths forward. These forums contribute to new relationships, deeper dialogue, and shared learning, and often serve as a starting point for continued collaboration and knowledge development.

Meeting places

Knowledge

Through market research, interviews, surveys, analyses, and follow-ups, Forum for Social Innovation Sweden tracks and collects lessons learned and examples of social innovation. We make this knowledge accessible to a wider audience through publications, our collection of examples, and our editorial work. This knowledge material places individual experiences within a broader context and helps ensure that knowledge and lessons learned do not remain confined to individual actors or time-limited initiatives. In this way, experiences can be applied in new contexts and at various levels.

Knowledge

This is how we are organized

Forum for Social Innovation Sweden organized as a national knowledge and collaboration platform with five Forum for Social Innovation Sweden based at five universities in Sweden: at the University of Borås, Luleå University of Technology, Malmö University, Umeå University, and Örebro University.

An important part of our approach is collaboration and co-creationamong our universities and with various stakeholders and organizations outside the academic world. Forum for Social Innovation Sweden contribute education, research, methods, and tools for social innovation, drawing on various disciplines and areas of expertise, as well as their respective local and regional contexts, challenges, networks, and collaboration partners. The organization serves as an infrastructure for co-creation in research, innovation, and collaboration across sectoraland organizational boundaries.

The platform makes it possible to pool knowledge, expertise, and resources in joint research and project proposals and to work in a coordinated manner in both national and international contexts. Together, the nodes contribute to Forum for Social Innovation Sweden collective position through shared knowledge and established contacts and networks in Sweden and Europe.