Enhance internationalization among Swedish companies

Service development for entrepreneurs’ needs

Internationalization brings huge opportunities for growth for Swedish companies and regions, but many of them face obstacles along the way.

The internationalization assignment for the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth involves developing and disseminating information about companies’ need for internationalization, as well as designing and carrying out initiatives to support the process. They are also collaborating with other players, such as Business Sweden, Visit Sweden and Almi.

Antrop has bolstered the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth with a deeper understanding of entrepreneurs’ needs and motivations and ideas for customer-focused solutions.

Merging entrepreneurs’ needs and the agency’s objectives

Service design methodology guided the project: Antrop worked with service development by merging entrepreneurs’ needs with the business objectives of the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth.

Interviews were conducted with 18 companies in seven regions. Together with participants from the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, a total of six workshops were held to leverage participants’ expertise and anchor the project. Insights were translated into customer journeys, target group descriptions and priorities based on the needs of entrepreneurs.

As the project progressed, Antrop worked continuously to anchor it internally with the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth. Antrop give clear recommendations for the next steps, a proposed method of attack and tools for continued work. Some of the priority areas included the need for correct, specific information from government agencies as well as clear pathways for contacting the support system.

Workshops throughout the country

An important key to this work was that it should not just result in a statistical report. Antrop designed work materials for use at the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth and among the regional facilitators. After the project’s conclusion, Antrop and the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth started holding workshops in various Swedish regions to identify their strengths and weaknesses with regard to internationalization and the customer journeys produced in the project.