The Swedish National Innovation Council (NIC) was created by the Prime Minister on February 9, 2015. In February 2017 it was restructured and Charles was reappointed for a second term, which runs until September 30, 2018.

The purpose of NIC is to develop Sweden’s national innovation system and thereby mitigate societal and environmental challenges as well as enhancing productivity growth and employment. NIC has an advisory role and adds new perspectives on questions of importance for innovation policy. NIC deals with policy issues that represent the most important parts of a coherent and holistic innovation policy. It contributes to the development of a coordinated and integrated innovation policy.

The Prime Minister is the chairman of NIC, and there is no deputy chairman. The Council meets four times per year, for 4 – 6 hours each time. From February 2017 NIC has the following responsible ministers and members:

Responsible Ministers:

• Stefan Löfven, Prime Minister
• Magdalena Andersson, Minister of Finance
• Mikael Damberg, Minister for Enterprise and Innovation
• Helene Hellmark Knutsson
• Isabella Lövin, Minister for International Development Cooperation and Climate, and Deputy Prime Minister

Additional Ministers are involved when needed. The Ministers’ state secretaries also take part in the NIC meetings.

Members of the NIC come from the business and research sectors. They are:

• Ola Asplund, Senior Adviser, IF Metall
• Mengmeng Du, entrepreneur and board member of various companies
• Charles Edquist, Professor in Innovation Studies at the Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the Learning Economy (CIRCLE), Lund University
• Darja Isaksson, digital strategist
• Sigbritt Karlsson, President of KTH, Royal Institute of Technology
• Martin Lundstedt, President and CEO of the Volvo Group
• Johan Rockström, Professor in Environmental Science and Executive Director of Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University
• Karl-Henrik Sundström, CEO and Managing Director of Stora Enso
• Jane Walerud, entrepreneur
• Carola Öberg, project manager at Innovationsfabriken Gnosjöregionen

To support its activities, the Innovation Council has a small office in the Prime Minister’s Office. The principal secretary of the Innovation Council is Wille Birksten. Oskar Thorslund is the Administrative Director of the office.

Charles has written a research article about the Swedish National Innovation Council. It describes and analyses the activities and results of NIC in quite some detail. It was earlier presented on this home page https://charlesedquist.com/2016/08/28/the-first-research-article-on-the-swedish-national-innovation-council-published/ .

The article can be downloaded here: http://wp.circle.lu.se/upload/CIRCLE/workingpapers/201624_edquist.pdf