Research and Innovation across the Atlantic
Brazil and Sweden have a well-established cooperation, and collaborate on several projects within the Aeronautics area. The Triple Helix concept originated in Sweden due to the country's strong partnership with universities, as well as industry and governmental authorities. This is of interest to Brazil, and is used in two ongoing projects described in this article.
CISB – an arena for open innovation
The Swedish-Brazilian Research and Innovation Centre (CISB), acts as an arena for open innovation and serves as an international hub in order to identify, develop and support research and development projects involving advanced technologies in a wide range of sectors. CISB has five focus areas, where Aeronautics is one.
CISB’s main purpose is to contribute a platform to enable researchers from both countries to meet and exchange experiences and knowledge. One example is the "Open Innovation Learning Week” where stakeholders from both countries meet in a joint effort to promote partnership between the countries. The “Open Innovation Learning Week” focuses on how to transform a good idea into a product that is able to reach the market and thus become an innovation.
“Both countries definitely benefit from this partnership, we learn from each other and when we join forces we become stronger and better in research as well as in innovation”, says Stefan Andersson, Course Director of Executive Innovation Management Course.
Knowledge sharing within academia
To work close with academia is one of the cornerstones to reach a successful level in research and development. In Sweden and at Saab we have a close connection with academia and this is something that Brazil is interested to know more about. One way to do that is to, in different initiatives; integrate Swedish and Brazilian academia for knowledge sharing.
One of these initiatives that Saab and Swedish universities have donated is a professorship in aeronautics to Brazil's Aeronautics Institute of Technology. The professorship means that selected Swedish professors get the opportunity to stay for a few months at a time in Brazil, where they are able to work on shared research projects and participate in the tuition. This creates a great point of contact and is conductive to strengthening the cooperation in the future. Petter Krus from Linköping University will be the first to hold the professorship and he says:
"I'm not going there to teach them how to do research. Brazil has an abundance of brilliant professors. I intend to promote innovation and cooperation between both our countries, which will provide the capabilities needed for the design of new aircraft”.
If you are interested in learning more about our innovation alliances and the power of collaboration, find out more here.