Tobias Fridholm: A portrait of MMTC's postdoctoral researcher and his work in transformative innovation policy

Dr Tobias Fridholm is a part time postdoctoral researcher at MMTC and a consultant who holds a PhD in human geography from Uppsala University. In his thesis he investigated the changing roles of the researcher in the process from basic research to innovation. As a consultant he has been doing analyses and evaluations mainly within research, innovation and higher education. Since 2017/2018 he shares his time between consultancy and doing research at JIBS.

Tobias’s research concerns so-called transformative innovation policy. That refers to innovation policy aimed at stimulating not only economic growth, productivity etc., but also broader societal challenges such as climate change, environmental degradation, sustainable use of resources, aging population and the likes. He focuses mainly on how to monitor and evaluate policy instruments in that area as well as on how such policies impact urban transition.

Tobias’s research has high societal relevance. The transition to a sustainable society is on top of the most international agendas and there is a direct need, from the local to the global level, for new or improved ways to monitor and evaluate the (by necessity) complex initiatives required to maneuver in this largely unchartered terrain.

Tobias is currently working with MMTC colleague Kersti Karltorp on a project funded by Vinnova, which is part of a national knowledge platform on transformative innovation policy called STIPP and engages researchers also from Lund and Linköping universities and from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. He is open to collaborations and thinks that the interdisciplinary environment at MMTC provides an excellent base for making relevant, innovative research that links scientific rigor with empirics on future-oriented topics that engage many parts of society.