About GEN in Sweden

GEN has a long history of working with the Swedish entrepreneurial ecosystem, dating back to the early years of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW). NyföretagarCentrum, the country's nationwide network of business advisory centers, served as one of the early local partners helping coordinate national activity, working alongside the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum (Entreprenörskapsforum) – a leading research institute on entrepreneurship and SMEs that was an active early-stage GEW partner. Sweden has remained engaged with GEW each November, with activity radiating out from Stockholm to Gothenburg, Malmö, and beyond, and Swedish missions abroad – such as the Embassy of Sweden in Egypt – have at times joined the global campaign by hosting their own GEW programming. 

Over the years, the Swedish GEW community has run student-focused activities, pitch nights, and ecosystem gatherings drawing high-impact entrepreneurs and unicorn founders to Stockholm – a city that, by the time of writing, has produced more billion-dollar companies per capita than any city outside Silicon Valley. 

GEN has also engaged Swedish leaders in its policy work. Sweden has been part of GEN's Startup Nations community of policymakers, with the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation appearing in the GEN network of national policy partners, and Swedish representatives took part in the second global edition of GEN's Startup Nations Policy Hack in 2018 – an iterative, peer-driven exercise where governments beta-test new regulatory ideas on specific entrepreneurship challenges. Members of Sweden's royal family have also lent visibility to entrepreneurship through soft-power channels closely watched by the GEN community, most notably through Prince Daniel's Fellowship – a program that pairs young people with founders, mentors, and role models to inspire the next generation of Swedish entrepreneurs – and the King's longstanding patronage of innovation initiatives, which GEN has profiled in its work on how royal families champion entrepreneurship. 

Many Swedish startups have used GEN programs to speed their growth over the years. Five Swedish startups have made their way to the finals of the Entrepreneurship World Cup, run by GEN and Monsha'at, where they had access to free training resources, mentorship, and exposure to potential investors. Heartstrings, Framtix Holdings, DSRUPTIVE, PlasticFri, and Cognes Medical Solutions all reached the EWC 100 and pitched for a share of the global $1 million prize pool at the EWC Global Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Cognes Medical Solutions, a Stockholm-based dementia-screening medical device company, advanced into the top 24 cash prize round at the EWC Global Finals in 2024, joining a small group of standouts selected from more than 16,000 applicants from 151 countries. More recently, Swedish founder Ludvig Klasman was one of three young entrepreneurs selected globally from more than 300 applicants to pitch at Expo 2025 Osaka through the Exponeur Academy – a flagship training program developed in partnership between GEN, Exponeur, and SBI Holdings, with strategic support from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Investment. 

Sweden's research community has been deeply embedded in GEN's global research networks. Rasmus Rahm of the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship has contributed to the Global Entrepreneurship Research Network (GERN), GEN's community of academics translating evidence into better policies and programs. The Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research Institute (ESBRI), one of Sweden's leading independent research bodies on entrepreneurship, is active in the same community, and Swedish Incubators and Science Parks engages across both GEN's policy and research communities. Ali Amin of UBI Global – a Stockholm-headquartered firm specializing in benchmarking and ranking business incubators and accelerators worldwide – has contributed insights on program evaluation through GEN's networks. Sweden has also performed strongly in the Index of Dynamic Entrepreneurship (IDE), a joint initiative between GEN and Prodem, where the 2024 edition named Sweden among the top-performing ecosystems globally for systemic conditions supporting dynamic entrepreneurship. In the Global Startup Ecosystem Report (GSER), produced annually by GEN and Startup Genome, Stockholm has consistently ranked among the world's leading cleantech ecosystems alongside Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, London, and Los Angeles. 

GEN maintains extensive relationships with key Swedish ecosystem stakeholders, including the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, NyföretagarCentrum, the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum, Swedish Incubators and Science Parks, the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship, ESBRI, UBI Global, and Norrsken – the foundation and venture capital firm operating impact-focused entrepreneur "houses" across European cities and in Kigali. Through these relationships, GEN connects Swedish founders, investors, and policymakers to a broader global network of peers tackling similar questions about how to build, fund, and scale high-impact ventures. 

GEN President Jonathan Ortmans has been a regular visitor to Sweden over the years, providing counsel to leadership focused on developing the country's already world-class innovation ecosystems, and Swedish founders, researchers, and policymakers continue to be active contributors across GEN's celebrate, support, and understand programs.