The Swedish Living Lab held its second meeting September 4th at our participant Sandra Levinsson’s farm café – Flättinge Gårdscafé – which she pursues on her family farm with her two sisters. The Lab’s co-leads Siv Lindén, Hela Sverige ska leva, and Dr Katarina Pettersson, SLU, led the participants to discuss how the women pursue their various rural and farm businesses. The participants prepared short presentations of their businesses, motivations, support – and then shared their experiences of their business development, including reflections on conditions and difficulties for development. For lunch we were served a lovely vegan burger produced of lupin beans grown at the farm.
The co-leads also led a focus group discussion with the women on innovation. We discussed if they do view themselves as innovators and what comes to mind when thinking about the concept ‘innovator’. For some of the women the general opinion is that an innovator is someone who invents something brand new, and that the women in the focus group rather are ‘entrepreneurs’. The concept of ‘innovation’ is associated with technology. For others being an innovator is the same as being an entrepreneur: which is about having an open mind to absorb new ideas on how to improve how they work and to have goals for what they do, and to become more effective – that this is what it means to be an entrepreneur. The women discussed that they have established rural companies that focus on other things that traditional farming, which could be seen as innovations only that they are unable to see it that way. The understanding in the group was that women and couples, to larger extent than men alone, establish new kinds of companies in rural areas, in particular in tourism and hospitality, and in the horse industry.
The third Living lab meeting was performed November 14th at Emma Hartelius’ farm – Grimstorps Gård – where she is producing ecologically certified beef from natural pasture fed cattle. The focus at this meeting was for the participants to get more knowledge on support opportunities in relation to the Regional Food Strategy as well as the Regional Tourism and Hospitality Strategy. We had stakeholders Bella Rådberg from the County Administrative Board in Jönköping; Christina Odén and Katrin Löwe from the Region Jönköping County (A Region is a self-governing local authority in Sweden. There are 21 regional councils each corresponding to a county in Sweden) with us and they presented theory work and available support for entrepreneurship and innovation. The participants engaged in feed-back and discussions on how their businesses can be better supported. At the workshop a couple of the participants also presented their businesses, as they had not had the opportunity to do so previously. Elin Skörde also presented her experiences from representing the Swedish team in Brussels for the show case event in September.
The fourth Living lab workshop is planned to take place February 6th, 2024, with a focus on business advice and support, and where a couple of stakeholders will be invited.
