The Quality Innovation Award is presented in around 20 countries and gives innovations the opportunity to be recognized and compared across countries and sectors. To win, innovations must contribute to spreading knowledge, be good examples and inspire other innovators.

Winner of the Quality Innovation Award 2020 in Sweden:

• Svevia 
• Solar Bora in Linköping
• Enbacksskolan in Tensta 
• Mellersta Förstadsskolan in Malmö
• Max Burgers

- "We are extremely proud of the winning Swedish innovations this year," comments Mats Deleryd, Executive Director of SIQ - the Institute for Quality Development, which is behind the innovation award in Sweden. "As in previous years, sustainability is a central theme for the innovations, which gives great confidence in the future. This year, several of the innovations also have a greater focus on social sustainability than before. 

Svevia

Innovation: Demand-driven sustainable winter road maintenance
Category: Potential innovations
The judging committee's motivation: Rapid weather changes, time pressure and high quality requirements make winter road maintenance a challenge, both for operations management staff and machine operators. Together with BM System, Svevia has developed a technology where digitalization creates new opportunities to streamline winter road maintenance. By combining high-resolution road weather forecasts with data flows from road sensors and connected vehicles in a decision support system, customized measures are developed. This has the potential to reduce exhaust gas emissions and salt consumption while increasing both road safety and the working environment via driver support and automation, and in light of this promising solution, the innovation is selected as a winner in the category of potential innovations within the framework of the Quality Innovation Award 2020.

Solar Bora in Linköping

Innovation: NextGen Solar Household System
Category: Circular economy and carbon neutrality Innovations
The judging committee's motivation: Solar Bora has developed a solar-powered system to enable, among other things, cooking on an induction plate and, through a circular business model, the new innovation is also made available to people in low-income countries who lack the financial means to buy the product. Given that up to 600 million people today lack access to reliable electricity, the innovation is of great importance from both a social and environmental perspective.

Enbacksskolan in Tensta

Innovation: SO-Verkstan
Category: Education sector innovations
Jury's motivation: Enbacksskolan has created a "SO-laboratory" where socially oriented subjects are systematically practiced. Based on interviews with e.g. politicians, reports are made through digital tools such as digital podcasts and collaboration with other activities nationally and internationally. This increases the students' awareness, social engagement and community and also provides positive results in social studies teaching. In Tensta, where the school operates, this contributes to increased integration with several social functions that are important to the students, now and in the future.

Mellersta Förstadsskolan in Malmö

Innovation: The reading strategy project
Category: Education sector innovations
Jury statement: The key to school success is reading, so strengthening this aspect improves performance in other subjects. With this in mind, Mellersta Förstadsskolan in the city of Malmö started a reading strategy project with language development approaches in all subjects. Through workshops and practical application, teachers have been trained as reading coaches and then work systematically on a broad basis based on the needs of the pupils to strengthen their knowledge acquisition and goal achievement. In the reading comprehension section of the national test, the objective was achieved after three years, which is a clear result of the project.

MAX Burgers

Innovation: Delifresh Plant Beef
Category: Dare to share
Jury's motivation: After many years of development and experimentation, MAX Burgers has developed Delifresh Plant Beef - a plant-based burger. The result is a product that looks, tastes and feels like a meat product, but with a significantly lower climate impact. The product aims to contribute to MAX's goal that the guest's average meal should not emit more than 0.5kg CO2e by 2050. Given a long and purposeful product development, with sustainable development in focus, MAX has increased sales of climate-friendly burgers by 1100% over the past four years. The development has not been without setbacks and in light of this, MAX Burgers wins the Quality Innovation Award 2020 in the category "Dare to share", to inspire others to persevere in their innovation work.

Information on the Quality Innovation Award

The Quality Innovation Award is an award given annually to organizations or individuals who have presented innovations with a clear link to a deliberately systematic approach to their work and based on a clearly identified customer need. Decisive factors for the award are novelty, usability, learning, customer orientation and effectiveness.

The award is a joint arrangement between quality institutes in several countries. Vinnova is SIQ's partner in Sweden. 

The Swedish award ceremony will take place on February 1 in Stockholm. The international ceremony will be held in Belgrade, Serbia, in February 2020, in the presence of the winners from each participating country. 

The refereeing committee consists of

• Lena Gustafsson - CEO and founder of Styrelsebalans
• Jacob Hallencreutz - CEO of EPSI Rating Group and Chairman of the Swedish Quality Index.
• Sofia Ritzén - Professor and Associate Dean at KTH Royal Institute of Technology
• Mikael Rönnholm - Head of Innovation Strategy at CEVT

The Referee Committee was supported in its work by Mikael Lindström and Mats Deleryd at SIQ.

For more information, please contact SIQ or the winners directly:

• Andreas Bäckström, Project Manager Predictive Dynamic Winter Road Maintenance, Svevia, 070-320 04 30, andreas.backstrom@svevia.se 
• Per Kangru, Founder, Solar Bora, 073-5055000, per@solarbora.com
• Iman Ehsani, First Teacher Social Sciences, Enbacksskolan, 073-7207475, iman.ehsani@edu.stockholm.se
• Ulrika Wirgin, Deputy Principal, Mellersta Förstadsskolan, 0708-396841, ulrika.wirgin@malmo.se
• Marita Wengelin, 070-365 79 89, marita.wengelin@max.se
• Mats Deleryd, CEO, SIQ - Institute for Quality Development, 070-3463725, mats.deleryd@siq.se
• Mikael Lindström, project manager, SIQ - Institute for Quality Development, 073-837 61 00, mikael.lindstrom@siq.se