Major effort in Swedish product development
Our country needs both new products and services to be able to compete globally. This is why VINNOVA, the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, is making a major effort towards supporting PIEp, the Product Innovation Engineering Programme – a national programme initiated, and now also hosted, by KTH.
With 50 MSEK a year for a ten-year period as back-up, universities and business enterprises will make a great effort to increase the volume of internationally marketable new products; this will include both goods, services and international business ideas. One of PIEp´s legs is a new university study programme in product innovation, which is already under way.
KTH will act as the uniting link and host of the project. Other partners are the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University, Jönköping University, the Institute of Design at Umeå University and the Center for Technology in Health. The programme will also involve business companies, authorities and organisations of every description.
The PIEp scheme was formally inaugurated on 7 December at KTH, as various speeches from a number of invited industrialists, entrepreneurs, persons in finance, scientists, students and decision-makers were presented.