SWEDISH AGENCY FOR ECONOMIC AND REGIONAL GROWTH (TILLVÄXTVERKET )– IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURSHIP SUPPORT, SWEDEN
MIGRANTS
The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (Tillväxtverket) provides financial support to schemes that support business creation by foreign-born residents and keeps a list of these schemes on its website to make it easier for aspiring immigrant entrepreneurs to find tailored local resources.
While Sweden has an objective to foster more entrepreneurship to support innovation and growth, some communities such as immigrants continue to have untapped entrepreneurial potential. The Agency aims to facilitate business creation by immigrants by sharing information, offering training and financial support, and facilitating networking. A programme focused on women immigrants was developed in 2018 after it was found that they were much less likely than immigrant men to start a business and access support.
The Agency offers funding for projects led by public sector and non-profit organisations that support immigrant entrepreneurship. The most common type of support offered is entrepreneurship training and individual guidance but mentorship and networking services are also available. A map of projects funded by the Agency is available on its website, making it easy for immigrant entrepreneurs to find relevant support programmes in their local area. The Agency has operated four consecutive programmes using this model over the period 2015-21: Faster integration (2015–2016), Fast track for newly arrived entrepreneurs (2016–2017), Promoting new arrivals' entrepreneurship (2017–2019), and Promoting foreign-born women's entrepreneurship (2018–2021). This last programme offers grants to schemes supporting immigrant women entrepreneurs. In addition to funding schemes, the agency offers pedagogical resources to help entrepreneurship support schemes improve their support to immigrant entrepreneurs. The Agency gathered insights from 13 pilot projects supporting newly-arrived immigrant entrepreneurs in Sweden between 2016 and 2019 and identified best practices that are shared on the agency’s website. A learning conference was held in 2020 to share this information. The agency also carries out research on the conditions for immigrant entrepreneurship.
The Agency website also features resources developed during previous support schemes such as booklets in different languages published in previous years and podcasts with interviews of successful foreign-born entrepreneurs. The Agency also supports the versamt.se portal, an interagency portal that provides information on business creation and development in Sweden. The portal has a section dedicated to foreign-born entrepreneurs available in Swedish and English.
How did the programme adapt to the pandemic? The programme has adapted some of its activities due to the pandemic (e.g. moving conferences online). Many funded support schemes adapted their supports to the changing needs of immigrant businesses. Instead of providing support for business growth, they have helped companies adapt their activities to manage the crisis in the short-term (e.g. adjusting their business concept, reducing their costs). The programme also supported some projects specific to the COVID-19 crisis: for example, the Start-up aid - Transition Due to the Corona Crisis project, which offers assistance to recent immigrant women entrepreneurs (businesses created in the past three years) hit by the COVID-19 crisis.
Tillväxtverket has commissioned an independent consultant, Ramboll Management Consulting (Ramboll) to carry out an overall evaluation of the agency's investments in foreign-born entrepreneurship during the period 2015–21, to be published in 2022. Ramboll has also carried out four programme-specific reviews. Since 2015, the Agency has funded 77 projects aimed at supporting immigrant entrepreneurship. Participants have started 1 160 companies during or after the projects. Most companies are run by men (partly explained by the fact that most project participants were men), and trade is the most common sector of activity for these businesses. The majority of companies (71%) were still active in 2021. Slightly over half of the inactive companies stopped trading during the pandemic. Approximately one-fifth of companies had a turnover over SEK 500 000 in 2020 (approximately EUR 48 000) and 3 companies had a turnover above SEK 10 million (approximately EUR 969 000). Companies were created in all Swedish regions, with 58% of them active in metropolitan areas, a distribution that reflects the population distribution. As of October 2021, 11 support projects were receiving funding as part of the Promoting Foreign-born Women’s Entrepreneurship 2018-21 programme.
- Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (2021), Entrepreneurship if you are new in Sweden, https://tillvaxtverket.se/english/entrepreneurship-if-you-are-new-in-sweden.html.
- Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (2021), Foreign-born women's entrepreneurship, https://tillvaxtverket.se/amnesomraden/kompetensforsorjning/utrikes-fodda-och-foretagande/utrikes-fodda-kvinnors-foretagande.html.