The Ericsson experience in the Swedish innovation landscape

Byline: Jon Sigurdson, Shantha Liyanage Achieving growth and maintaining success in a firm is an intended strategy that needs to be carefully crafted throughout the business cycle. Both technology strategies and business imperatives must be continuously reviewed in order to keep a firm innovating at a steady phase. A firm's stature and financial statutes do not provide a license to seize innovation opportunities. Even well established firms can flounder and stumble and fall. The ability to innovate is a critical success factor for many firms. Innovation capability is not necessarily a determinant of a firm's size or economic dominance, although the ability to adopt and change innovation strategies provides dominant firms with high agility. A firm's corporate and innovation cultures are vital in shaping and responding adequately to the call of innovation in the market place. This case study illustrates how a major telecommunication company may sustain or lose its innovation capacity in an intensely competitive global market.