Jordbruk som innovationsnätverk : Hur påverkar närhet och distans innovationen?

As society moves towards being more and more digitalised, so does agriculture as well. Hopefully these digital tools will help us reach environmental goals through optimizing the use of resources in the agricultural sector. However, there are a few barriers to overcome for the digital transition to run smoothly. This thesis investigates a small portion of the agricultural innovation network in Sweden. This is done through multiple interviews and literary research. We can clearly see how this innovation network during the last decades has moved towards becoming more knowledge centered and how the model triple helix now easily can be applied to the network. The network is then analysed using Ron Boschma’s five proximity factors and it becomes clear that concerning the agricultural innovation network, the cognitive and institutional proximity is of great importance for the innovational strength. It also becomes clear that the different proximity factors seldom act alone, but instead build upon each other to increase the negative respectively positive outcomes. Moreover it is shown that regarding the agricultural innovation network in Sweden, it can only benefit from improving the proximity factors, which is different from other types of industries.