Eco-innovations in the Swedish Context

Abstract: The topic of eco-innovation has gained much traction over the last decade due to its potential to improve environmental sustainability without compromising socio-economic goals. This thesis presents a descriptive analysis of the national and regional patterns of eco-innovation in Sweden using new long-run data over the period of 1970-2013 from the SWINNO database. Results show that the long-run aggregate patterns display similarities with general innovation theory, whilst regional patterns point more towards differences. The main differences include the weak effects of clustering and regional size. These findings suggest that there is potential for eco-innovation development in regions of varying sizes through regional cluster policy. Furthermore, regional performance is found to evolve substantially over time, highlighting this potential for eco-innovation development. Sweden has displayed a commitment towards sustainable growth for decades – these new findings could be of use in policy discussions regarding how to support eco-innovations and potentially, a grander sustainability transition.