Building innovation ability in Nordic organizations: how to develop organizations’ ability to innovate

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, several development activities were undertaken in a Swedish and a Danish organization. The research project focused on how the organizations’ innovation ability was affected by a developed Nordic inspired learning model. It was found that the tested organizational learning model holds great promise for the improvement of organizations capability to innovate, which, in turn, plays a key part of an organization’s ability to innovate.

Innovation has been one of the highest prioritized topics for countries, policy bodies, and enterprises across industry types for decades while also representing a dynamic and vibrant research field and community. This article reports on the results from the Vinnova-sponsored ‘Building Innovation Capacity project’ (BIC) exploring how innovation abilities are developed in organizations. The main objective of the BIC project was to experiment with a Nordic learning and competence model for the improvement of innovation ability. Practical recommendations for how to design and support development of innovation ability are offered.