Phase 2: The Creation of a Research Center Focusing on both Rigour and Relevance (2015-2019)

With the experience from the MDA program, the new relationships within Swedish football and hockey, and several good research ideas, the Center for Sports & Business was created in June 2015.

The first Director of the Center for Sports and Business was Kalle Kraus. Kalle was at that time Associate Professor at SSE (now he is a Full Professor and Head of the Accounting Department), which was needed to formally become responsible for a research center at SSE.

Already from the start, our ambition was to develop an internationally recognized research center that focused on both academic rigour and practical relevance. As we see it, rigour and relevance are not opposites. Instead, they complement each other so that theory development can go hand in hand with practice interaction.

Key milestones between 2011-2018

In these early years, we focused primarily on research and practice interaction. For example, several of the ideas from the Executive Education programs were turned into research projects and later international publications. Often, a new idea would be tested in a BSc or MSc thesis and then further developed into a paper. Except for building a faculty at SSE, we were also lucky to get interest from international academics to join the Center for Sports and Business.

An engine for growth (both intellectually and practically) was the Advisory Board that was created in 2015-2016. Forming strategic partnerships with the Swedish Olympic Committee and many of the large Swedish sports (football, hockey, golf, equestrian, trot racing, and skiing), we got access to a wealth of data for our research. Since we also got interested in large mass sports events, we were also very thankful when the mass-sport events, we were also very thankful when the mass-sport event organization A Swedish Classic (https://ensvenskklassiker.se/) joined our Center.

In order to identify research topics with high practical relevance, Center members and the Advisory Board jointly developed "the Strategic Map for Swedish Sports and Business Research". This map describes 12 concrete challenges that Swedish sports face and that we believe also are interesting from an academic perspective. Thus, the map combines academic rigour and practical relevance.

The Strategic Map for Swedish Sports and Business Research.

The strategic map creates alignment between researchers and sports executives. When researchers do projects within one of the 12 areas, executives know the practical relevance of their work. Over time, we can also document the activities of the Center in a systematic and coherent way.

A concrete project that we have done within the innovation theme is Innovationstrappan (the Innovation Stair Case). The project was carried out between 2017 and 2019 and led by Mathilda Hammarström and Louise Hiort af Ornäs, two SSE students. Funded by the Swedish Innovation Agency (Vinnova), the purpose of the project was to inspire young athletes within the Swedish equestrian and trot racing to engage with innovation and entrepreneurship. More concretely, the project developed a customized version of the high school entrepreneurship program Ung Företagsamhet (https://ungforetagsamhet.se/). Working with the three national equestrian and trot racing high schools (Flyinge, Strömsholm, and Wången), the program not only developed a new sports tech program for high school students but also pilot-tested it on more than 200 students. Watch the project movie by clicking on the picture below.

Innovationstrappan, developing a new entrepreneurship curriculum for young athletes (click on the picture and see our video).

Another innovation initiative was the Swedish Olympic Academy (SOA). Together with the Swedish Olympic Committee, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), and the Karolinska Institute, this foundation was created in 2017. The purpose of SOA is to create multidisciplinary projects that help to develop Swedish sports. One such initiative was the SPIN Accelerator Sweden which was launched in 2019. Led by Stefan Lindeberg (SOA), Stina Lundgren Högbom (SSE, Center for Sports and Business), and Gustav Notander (KTH Innovation), the accelerator helped 10 Sport Tech companies from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Germany grow their business.

SPIN Accelerator Sweden

During 2019, we also worked very closely with Swedish Trot Racing, Swedish Football, and Swedish Ice Hockey in terms of Executive Education. After the initial success in 2014 and with our new research capability, we launched multi-year Executive Education programs with these three sports. Instrumental in achieving this was Robert Larsson. He had previously been COO at the Swedish Sports Confederation (and also an MDA alumnus) and did a fantastic job as a Program Director. In fact, he was so successful that the Swedish Hockey League recruited him in 2021 to be the COO of SHL.

Executive Education at Kämpasten (SSE's ExEd Campus in Sigtuna)

Despite the many activities focusing on practical relevance, we also managed to keep up with research. In the time period 2015-2019, members of the Center for Sports and Business published 22 articles in internationally recognized journals (see the specific page on academic output for more details). From a research perspective, a highlight was the first physical workshop within the Strategic Management Group. It took place in Stockholm in April 2019.

Research workshop for Strategic Management Group in April 2019