Sweden has the pieces of the puzzle—now we need to put them together

Sweden has fantastic resources—research, companies, marine resources, and strong innovation ecosystems. But how can we get better at connecting them and creating more value here at home? Following the first Sister Ocean Cluster Convening in Iceland, the work on a Sweden Ocean Cluster is taking the next step—with a focus on companies’ needs and business opportunities.

When ocean clusters, companies, entrepreneurs, and innovation stakeholders from around the world recently gathered in Iceland at the Iceland Ocean Cluster, one question remained at the forefront of everyone’s minds: How can we create greater value from the ocean’s resources through innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship?

Representing Innovatum Science Park was Sonja Andrén, innovation leader in the blue bioeconomy. For her, one of the most powerful insights from her time in Iceland was not linked to a single technology or product, but rather to how collaboration among different stakeholders had been built up.

“In Iceland, it’s common to talk about fish not as a product, but as a resource with many potential uses. This has enabled Iceland to foster innovation in everything from food and health to materials and biotechnology. Sweden already has much of the knowledge and resources, but we need to get better at connecting the various stakeholders,” says Sonja.

From Marine Resources to New Business Opportunities

The very idea of viewing the entire raw material as a potential source of value creation is an important lesson from Iceland. For Kristina Levan, a business developer at Business Region Göteborg, it’s also about seeing opportunities beyond traditional applications. She also gained several insights from her visit to Iceland.

“An important lesson from Iceland is to view the entire raw material as a resource—and every byproduct as a potential business opportunity. It’s about moving away from high volume and relatively low value-added processing toward products in areas such as health, diagnostics, biomaterials, cosmetics, and specialty ingredients,” says Kristina Levan.

Business Region Göteborg sees particularly interesting opportunities here for Western Sweden, at the intersection of marine resources, life sciences, food, materials, and industrial biotechnology. It is not, therefore, merely a matter of making better use of a raw material. The question is also what value can be created from it, where that value arises, and how new companies, products, and markets can be developed.

The pieces of the puzzle are already in place

The effort to bring together stakeholders in the blue bioeconomy did not begin with the trip to Iceland. For several years, Innovatum Science Park has been working with companies, research institutions, and public sector actors to develop collaborations and meeting places—not least through projects such as the Nordic Seafood Summit, Marefine, and Blå Samverkan.

The collaboration with the Iceland Ocean Cluster dates back to 2022. Since then, activities such as workshops, company visits, and meetings focused on marine byproducts, circular business opportunities, and increased value creation have been carried out.

At the same time, these experiences have made one thing clear: Sweden does not necessarily lack more stakeholders. There are already companies, entrepreneurs, research, testing and demonstration environments, and public sector actors here. The challenge is to get these elements to work better together. This is one of the starting points for the work now emerging around the Sweden Ocean Cluster.

“We have strong research, innovative companies, and entrepreneurs in the fields of seafood, aquaculture, marine ingredients, and circular solutions. At the same time, many still work in their own segments of the value chain. A Sweden Ocean Cluster could serve as a neutral meeting place that brings these stakeholders together and helps identify new business opportunities, collaborations, and innovation projects,” says Sonja.

Business benefits must come first

At the same time, the goal is not to build a new structure just for the sake of having one. For a Sweden Ocean Cluster to create real value, the starting point must be the needs of the companies.

“We need to start with the companies’ needs and business opportunities, not with the cluster structure itself. The cluster needs to do things that are difficult for individual companies to do on their own. For example, connecting the right skills and value chains, opening doors to testing environments and research, identifying funding and international partners, and helping innovations all the way to market,” says Kristina Levan.

At the same time, she emphasizes the importance of building on the existing environments and partnerships, rather than creating yet another parallel structure.

A future cluster could also provide companies with better access to expertise, testing and demonstration environments, partners, and funding, while at the same time raising the international profile of Swedish companies.

Sweden Closer to an International Network

The international perspective is an important part of this work. The Sister Ocean Cluster Network brings together ocean clusters to facilitate, among other things, knowledge exchange, cross-border collaboration, and new connections between businesses, research institutions, and the public sector.

During the trip to Iceland, Innovatum Science Park and Business Region Göteborg continued their dialogue with the Iceland Ocean Cluster and other international stakeholders. The delegation also included the startup AquaFood, which had the opportunity to present its innovation for increasing value creation from fish to an international audience.

The participants also met with Iceland’s President Halla Tómasdóttir to discuss sustainable innovation and the importance of collaboration. For Swedish companies, these international relationships may lead to new opportunities in the long term.

“Through collaborations with other ocean clusters, Swedish companies, researchers, and innovators can gain access to new markets, expertise, and projects. The goal is to gradually lay the groundwork for a Sweden Ocean Cluster that both strengthens national collaboration and connects Sweden more closely to the growing international network of ocean clusters,” says Sonja.

The next step will take place on home turf

Following the visit to Iceland, work will continue to build the network in Sweden, involve more stakeholders, and identify areas where collaboration can lead to concrete business and innovation opportunities.

And perhaps that is precisely where the most important lesson from Iceland lies. Sweden doesn’t have to start from scratch. Many of the pieces of the puzzle are already in place.

Now it's a matter of connecting them.