Training Course: Investment Promotion for Cities, Municipalities and Regions

Improve your municipality’s or region’s ability to attract, receive, and retain businesses and investments.

The interest from investors for Nordic regions and municipalities is higher than ever.

At the same time, many cities and regions in the Nordics and Europe are professionalizing their investment promotion strategies to stand out from the crowd, leading to increased competition.

We are now inviting municipalities, regions, and innovation hubs to a learning journey that focuses on long-term business establishment and investment promotion contributing to growth, innovation, and employment.

As a participant at this course, you will get:

✅ A proven methodology package – Business Attraction Management – that focuses on the entirety of economic and regional development, including marketing, the attraction process, and the establishment phase, as well as activities and strategies aimed at ensuring the continued growth, development, and success of an investment over an extended period.

✅ Common concepts and necessary tools and strategies based on real cases and best practices.

✅ Inspiring investment cases, along with trend insights into the latest industry developments.

✅ The opportunity to share experiences, tips and tools with other participants from municipalities, regions, and innovation hubs.

Focus on participants’ questions at issue, including:

✅ How do we market ourselves and our location to investors and businesses?

✅ How do we generate interest from investors and ensure that the business establishment and a “soft landing” proceed smoothly?

✅ How can we enable newly established businesses to expand, be innovative, and succeed in our location?

✅ Who are our ideal investors?

✅ How does our place brand fit into the business investment promotion strategy?

✅ How do we identify and communicate effective value propositions for our location?

✅ What are the most common pitfalls in investment promotion?

Who should participate?

We invite municipalities, regions, and innovation hubs that have ambitions to grow and develop their business sector.

The target audience includes business managers, business strategists, investment and establishment coordinators, business developers, communicators, place marketers, project managers, and others working on business development or investment at the municipal or regional level.

You are welcome to participate individually, but we encourage team participation – this is an excellent opportunity to strengthen the collaboration of the group working together on investment promotion.

Course sessions

In Swedish:

Helsingborg, Sweden, 29-30 January 2025
Stockholm, Sweden, 19-20 March 2025

In English with an international POV:

Oslo, Norway, 22-23 January 2025

How does it work?

The course proceeds through a combination of presentations, discussions, and workshops designed to foster interaction and learning.

The training is built on the ‘Business Attraction Management for Cities and Regions’ model (BAM). It offers participants new perspectives on long-term investment promotion, common concepts to enable collaboration between different units, and practical tools and strategies to enhance efficiency.

Figure: Business Attraction Management (BAM).

Registration and price

SEK 12,900/EUR 1135 excluding VAT, including coffee breaks, one lunch, a joint dinner on the evening of the first day, including reading material.

If there are more participants from the same organization, we offer a discount: SEK 18,900 for two participants or SEK 23,900 for three participants.

It is possible to register individuals from multiple organizations collaborating on the issues in your municipality or region to take advantage of the group discount.

What happens if the date doesn’t suit you?

If you prefer, we can come to you – for a full or half-day, with your team, on your home turf, with up to 20 participants.

About the course leaders

Fredrik Jonsson is highly experienced in regional and municipal investment and start-up promotion. During his seven years at Invest in Skåne, he worked as an investment advisor and business development manager in sectors such as cleantech, food, tech, gaming and industrial manufacturing, attracting both national and international investors to Skåne and its municipalities, often in close collaboration with municipal promoters. Before that, he worked with investment promotion and business development for the cluster organisation Cleantech Scandinavia. At Future Place Leadership, Fredrik has worked with a number of regional establishment and investment promotion projects.

Jessica Skantze has a solid background in municipal business promotion, strategy development and regional collaboration in investment and establishment promotion, competence supply, competence attraction and innovation promotion. During her six years at the business department of the City of Helsingborg, she worked with a number of initiatives in business promotion and skills supply.

At Future Place Leadership, Jessica has helped a number of municipalities and regions with process management, strategy development, regional collaboration, development of value proposition and learning about investment and establishment promotion.

Over the last 15 years, Marcus Andersson has worked with a wide range of Swedish, Nordic and European initiatives and assignments in the field of establishment and investment promotion, attractiveness of places, cluster and innovation promotion and competence attraction for places. He has helped a number of Swedish and Nordic municipalities and regions to develop strategies, action plans, market plans, analyses, training, concepts and activities for improved establishment and investment promotion. In 2016, he led the development project Business Attraction Management for Nordic Cities and Regions which together with 22 different municipalities, regions and national authorities in the Nordic region developed the methodology Business Attraction Management, which is now used by a number of organisations around the Nordic region.