Innovation Makes the World Go Round: Sweden
Posted: January 27th, 2012 in Innovation
By: Gabriela Mendieta
Travel, particularly international travel, has always been a great love of mine. I’ve decided to combine that love with my passion for innovation into a blog series that focuses on what’s happening in innovation internationally. When you say the word “innovation” and ask people to say the first thing that comes to their mind, the immediate response is usually “Apple” or “Google.” While those companies are incredibly innovative, I do want to break the mold a bit and demonstrate how innovation is making an impact in other ways round the world, with results that are not just about market defining devices or web capabilities.
Our first stop is Sweden. Sweden is a fantastic example of how innovation is being leveraged in the government/public sector, with incredibly successful results. Sweden has made it their priority in the last decade to improve national road safety and decrease traffic fatalities. Road safety has been a national passion ever since Nils Bohlin developed the three-point seatbelt (which everyone has in their cars today) while working for Volvo in 1959. Since then, the Swedes and Swedish companies have been behind a very long list of safety innovations in cars, including the laminated windshield, side airbags, and rear facing child seats.
The country has a number of governmental agencies and commissions dedicated exclusively to road safety, such as the Swedish National Road Administration and the Swedish Road Safety Commission. They have been behind much of the progress made in road safety, including the financing of an Intelligent Safety Systems program to develop the next generation of Alcolocks and allowing researchers to leverage military technology to develop systems in cars that can track body heat, making it safer for pedestrians and drivers. Most recently, Swedish Road Safety Commission and Volvo implemented the Speed Camera Lottery in Stockholm, which photographs both speeders and speed-limit adherents with a portion of the subsequent fines levied against speeders being pooled in a lottery, with a random winner periodically drawn from the group of speed-limit adherents. The results of the initial tests yielded a 22% reduction in speed, with the average speed of drivers going from 32 mph to 25 mph.
As a result of this national focus on innovating in this particular category and having governing bodies providing both funding and guidance, Sweden now has the lowest per capita traffic fatalities in the world, and they are now working to completely eliminate traffic fatalities by 2020 through a program called Vision Zero. So it just goes to show you, you don’t have come up with the next computer or device to be innovative, and focusing on this key need and category has allowed Sweden to improve the safety and lives of its citizens for years to come.