Driving Force - Business Development

For you who run a business and want to use your and the location's conditions to create concrete business development - together with at least one partner. Benefit for your businesses and for your location or rural area.

You can receive up to 50,000 SEK in support for an initiative. Read more below!

Leader enables power to your drive

Driving Force Business Development targets you as a business owner and entrepreneur
who have ideas that – through collaboration – can develop and strengthen your businesses

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Do you have an idea that can take your businesses a step further?

Driving Force Business Development is for you who want to try something new, develop your operations or find new ways forward for your entrepreneurship. Through Drivkraft, you can receive support for smaller, concrete initiatives that create development – something that might not have happened otherwise. 

We are looking for ideas where businesses join forces - perhaps around a common destination, a local product, a new market, a smart solution, or a skills initiative that more than your business can benefit from.

It can, for example, involve:

  • carrying out a joint development effort together with other businesses
  • seeking help to develop a new business idea, method, or form of collaboration
  • developing new products, services, or experiences
  • packaging and reaching new target groups through new working methods in communication and marketing
  • strengthen businesses' skills in areas such as AI, digitalization, or sustainable development

Leader Sörmlandskusten can support with up to 70% of an initiative, and you are responsible for at least 30 % of the cost yourselves. It is always a purchased service/expense, and you cannot purchase services from yourselves.

Here’s how the application process works:

Expression of interest form

1. Submit your expression of interest
Download and fill out the form on the page and briefly describe your idea. Send it to matilda@leadersormlandskusten.se then you will receive feedback.

2. Feedback from the Leader Office
We will contact you after an initial assessment. Promising ideas will be taken forward.

Submit the application and budget (max 5 cost items)
You submit an application with a simple budget for the initiative. Support is normally given for 25,000–50,000 SEK excluding VAT.

4. Decisions & agreements
If the project is prioritized, you will receive a concise agreement with clear terms and conditions.

5. Implement the subproject
You carry out the intervention (2–6 months) and save invoices and proof of payment.

6. Accounting & payment
The support is paid out when you have submitted a report with paid invoices and payment documentation from the bank.

 

 

Competence development and competence supply

  • A course/training for more entrepreneurs – strengthen competence together
  • Joint networking day for more businesses where you have knowledge sessions and inspiration to strengthen your knowledge and competence, keeping you updated with current monitoring of the external environment
  • Analysis of businesses' skills supply and action plan for this, e.g., microlearning or routines for knowledge transfer

Examples you can apply for support for

New target groups, methods, and working methods

  • Develop collaboration with other businesses by creating packaged offers together

  • Conduct joint study visits or business marketing trips with other businesses, to find new target groups, inspiration, increased competence

  • Analysis and consulting efforts related to common new working methods, new target groups, new methods

 

 

New products, goods, and markets

  • Develop new products or goods together with other businesses
  • Shared costs for certifications or labels to enable the sale of new products
  • Costs associated with introducing your product to wholesalers or stores

Digitalization & smart technology

  • Analysis of common needs to strengthen businesses' opportunities with digitalization and automation - strengthen your digital skills

  • Develop common digital tools and services such as digital courses or consulting

Marketing

  • Strengthen a destination or place together with other companies and actors through new marketing/ joint material
  • Create a joint website/web destination for your joint marketing
  • Strengthen a destination's actors through a common story and vision - marketing through storytelling
  • Joint marketing to get more customers to understand the value (and pricing) of local, locally grown, certified food and drink
  • Develop new material (image/video) to reach new target groups

Transition and sustainability

  • Joint study visits related to product development, methods, and working methods for environmental sustainability
  • Joint analyses or consulting efforts related to product development for environmental sustainability
  • Joint analyses or consulting efforts related to businesses' work for reduced environmental impact

ABOUT DRIVKRAFT

We want to grant support to 12-20 businesses in total during the period October 2026 – June 2028.

Criteria for applying:

  • You are active within the Leader Sörmlandskusten area
  • You are a sole or micro business (max 9 employees) or is an organization that supports more businesses 
  • In the project/initiative, you collaborate with at least one other business – benefit to more than your business
  • Other external co-financing must not occur
  • One sub-project per company and year
  • Max five purchases per sub-project

You can not receive support for:

  • Ongoing operations or salaries
  • Own work
  • Investments (physical purchases over 24,000 SEK excluding VAT, with a lifespan of more than three years)
  • Already started or completed activities
  • Initiatives related to primary production
  • Initiatives that you would have done without the support

The project targets the entire Leader Sörmlandskusten area, i.e. companies operating in Trosa, Nyköping's rural areas and small towns, Oxelösund, Södertälje, Salem (Rönninge), and Botkyrka (Grödinge). 

 

Selection and criteria

Decisions are made continuously by a decision group, and the decision is based on the project's selection criteria.

All sub-projects must meet basic criteria related to sustainability, local needs, the initiative's basis in equality and non-discrimination.

Sub-projects in an umbrella project

You can receive support for one initiative per year.

The sub-projects are part of an umbrella project. This means that Leader Sörmlandskusten runs a larger project, and within it, local actors can apply for smaller initiatives. This means:

  • faster decision

  • less administration

  • simple applications

  • support for small development efforts 

The project is partially funded by the EU

The project is funded by the municipalities included in the Leader area, the Swedish state, and the EU.

Basic criteria

🌱 Contributes to business development in collaboration
The initiative should contribute to business development, strengthen businesses' competitiveness, and create development

💡 Innovative and creative
The initiative should be something new and innovative that is not regular operations, but a ”step forward”

⚖️ Feasibility and cost-effectiveness
The initiative should provide good benefits in relation to the cost and have a reasonable budget in relation to the scope

🤝 Collaboration and participation
The initiative should involve more actors or local networks of entrepreneurs

🌍 Sustainable solutions for resilient businesses
Initiatives that promote sustainability, circularity, or energy efficiency are given higher priority