The Swedish Internet Foundation invests heavily in new open meeting place for internet innovation

The Swedish Internet Foundation is investing heavily in starting an open meeting place for internet innovation. A long-term investment that is estimated at 5 – 10 million SEK per year. The goal is to develop a creative meeting place where new ideas can be developed, tested and allowed to grow at an early stage.

For many years, The Swedish Internet Foundation has promoted internet-based innovation, including events with an entrepreneur focus and research collaborations with the Stockholm School of Economics. The investment in the new meeting place is the next step in this long-term work and one of the largest in the Foundation’s history.

Many people sit on great ideas that have the potential to be developed into successful products and services – entrepreneurs, developers, “makers”, researchers and amateurs. But until now, Stockholm has been lacking an open place for all of these groups to meet and develop.

“Good spaces and networks that focus on startups with complete business ideas already exist. We want to complement these and therefore want to focus on developing activities and ideas at an earlier stage. We want the meeting place to function both as a platform for testing new ideas and as a springboard on the way to a finished product or company”, says Niklas Serén, Project Leader at The Swedish Internet Foundation.

An inclusive and free meeting place

The goal is that the new meeting place should be an area for creating networks, testing ideas, working on new projects and products, and arranging events and training. The ideas need not have a clear commercial potential. Creativity and curiosity can go a long way, as many great innovations are born through playing around with ideas.

The meeting place will be open for all and membership will be free of charge. The Swedish Internet Foundation will open its doors for the meeting place in April of 2017. It will be located in the new premises adjacent to the new The Swedish Internet Foundation’s office in Hammarby Sjöstad, just a stone’s throw from Skanstull.

In addition to the open meeting place, the premises will contain an incubator for entrepreneurs who have come a bit farther and started their own business. A number of companies that The Swedish Internet Foundation believes has the potential to improve the internet and its use will be offered access to office spaces and an expanded network. The focus will initially be on data-driven innovation, meaning companies that create new services with the help of open data.

“We want to build this meeting place together with the Swedish internet community. The time from now until the opening will be used not only to build the venue, but to also finalize the concept. We welcome suggestions and comments on what this meeting place should be and encourage potential interested parties to get in contact with us at an early stage,” says Niklas Serén.