Small and medium sized firms’ businesses in rural regions typically address a home market and the delivery of niched products. This makes them exposed to business downturns, innovation is thus one way to survive and prosper. Small-scale product development is typically very hands-on, a sort of trial and error process. This experimental way is in favour for the implementation of innovation processes, but one challenge is the limited resources that firms can, or are willing to, spend on innovative work. A challenge is that procedures for organisational learning are lacking in the straightforward approach. The article describes the background and rationale for supporting small-scale manufacturing by introducing a support toolbox for early product development work. The support toolbox’s rationale is built upon learning cycles and communicative prototyping which may enhance innovation process capabilities.

Purpose – The study aims to revisit six previously defined challenges in information security risk management to provide insights into new challenges based on current practices.

Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on an empirical study consisting of in-depth interviews with representatives from public sector organisations. The data were analysed by applying a practice-based view, i.e. the lens of knowing (or knowings). The results were validated by an expert panel.

Findings – Managerial and organisational concerns that go beyond a technical perspective have been . found, which affect the ongoing social build-up of knowledge in everyday information security work.

Research limitations/implications – The study has delimitation as it consists of data from four public sector organisations, i.e. statistical analyses have not been in focus, while implying a better understanding of what and why certain actions are practised in their security work.

Practical implications – The new challenges that have been identified offer a refined set of actionable advice to practitioners, which, for example, can support cost-efficient decisions and avoid unnecessary security trade-offs.

Originality/value – Information security is increasingly relevant for organisations, yet little is still known about how related risks are handled in practice. Recent studies have indicated a gap between the espoused and the actual actions. Insights from actual, situated enactment of practice can advise on process adaption and suggest more fit approaches.

The Innovations and Industrial Internet project was formed with partners from Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, Centria University of Applied Sciences, Finland, and University of Tromsø, campus Narvik, Norway. The work has addressed an increase in small and medium sized enterprises’ competences of applying modern digital technology to benefit product- and service development in the region. Almost 40 companies have been keenly involved in the project’s activities, which have included, for example, case studies, demonstrations, workshops and seminars. The close academia and company collaborations has resulted in SMEs’ test and evaluation of new technologies, in turn leading to the implementation of new methods that were new to 16 of those companies.

The project collaborations have resulted in 9 products and services that were new to the companies. A number of cross-border collaborations among companies and universities across the program region have been finalized, for example a case on 3D printing and boat production which involved all partners competences. The cross-border added value does not only encompass the open accessible milieu bringing all partners expertise together to benefit SMEs in the region, but it also identified and mitigated barriers between knowledge domains, like the ones occurring in value chain collaborations where digital solutions often dissolve some aspects of a problem while simultaneously cause new ones.

The project has had a fairly good representation of females in leading positions since the project leader and one country’s leader are females, but also the female representation in activities has been good.

The project has been nominated to the Regio Stars Award 2017.

Digitalization is a source for Industrial Internet, which solutions influence businesses and everyday life in many different ways. The digital transformation calls for understanding, not only about your customers, but also your whole organization. A digital business world opens up for seamless and borderless collaborations in product, service and production development, yet such a visionary future need both systematic and systemic changes in companies. As such open innovation approaches including participatory research studies could support regional growth and increase competitiveness among SMEs. This article describes how these issues have been managed in a transnational project for the Northern Nordics.

As an area of excellence in research and innovation, EffectiveInnovation & Organization (EIO) at Luleå University ofTechnology (LTU) represents an important initiative aimedat addressing societal challenges by combining engineeringand social science research. EIO enables the pooling of resourcesfrom various scientific disciplines to address manyof the societal challenges Sweden is currently facing. Thisbook is one result from such pooling of disciplines, resourcesand cross-disciplinary discussions. Here, some leading EIOresearchers have jointly analysed and reflected upon fivekey societal challenges to identify some of their implicationsand future pathways for research at LTU. All of these challengesspan multiple scientific domains, and competence ininnovation and organisation will be critical if they are to beaddressed effectively.

Starting from interactions with SMEs from a number of different areas, this short paper addresses the challenges of turning hands-on practice into an online supports tool for innovation. The SMEs are found in the North of Finland and the North of Sweden, thus already facing challenges related to the sparsely populated areas. Yet, digitalization and online support may become one way to bridge distances as well as filling knowledge gaps between different domains. Nevertheless, the suggestion to transform practical know-how into an online tool that can be globally accessed and used is non-trivial. Thus, problematizing such ideas could progress these efforts.

The research field of Product-Service Systems (PSS) emerged within the engineering design field to address sustainability and radically lower environmental impact from production and product use stages. PSS research has progressed insights of the industrial phenomena, but are often grounded in either product or service development, and the sustainability perspective had diminished over time. The deviation from what was intended might depend on research methodologies that do not meet the requirements of PSS multidisciplinary research. Some reflections of our research and craftsmanship are thus needed, which is also the purpose of this paper. PSS are used in the paper as a framework to highlight some of the facets of engineering design research activities. The paper suggests that multidisciplinary research has to manage different methodologies and different theories, this can be achieved if underlying assumptions are made transparent and if contradictions between those and the conclusions are discussed. Finally, the paper make an effort to encourage discussions about research methodologies to improve not only research but also implementation in industry.

TARGET is a collaborative project involving a partnership of universities and institutes of higher education in UK, Ireland, Norway, Finland and Sweden. The project will develop tools to enhance capacity in regional manufacturing companies to adapt and embrace new technologies and innovation. This is to be done in collaboration with small/medium sized manufacturing engineering companies - developing, applying and piloting the tools through individual companies' processes. The Toolbox developed will consist of subsets such as Digital manufacturing (robotics and simulation), New Ideas and Thinking (human centred and environmental thinking, competitiveness), Business Models and modern Product Innovation. On completion of the Project, the Toolbox of supports will be made available for use through open access to manufacturing companies. The initial project phase with development of a Toolbox suitable for use in all the project partners' regions is presented.