Editor's Note: Nils Eric Svensson, business development manager for Region Skåne, was tragically injured late Tuesday night, April 21, in an accident on the streets of Savannah.  He died near midnight at the Memorial University Medical Center. He was making his fifth trip to coastal Georgia, this time for the SACC-USA Edays conference. The GlobalGeorgia staff offers our sincerest condolences for the loss of a friend, colleague and business partner who welcomed us with the warmest hospitality during a recent trip to Sweden. 

For most of the 20th century, the city of Malmö, Sweden, was defined by its proximity to the sea.

The city had a wharf industry that employed a large proportion of its workforce building massive oil and liquefied natural gas tankers, sending them out to fuel the world's large economies.

In the late 1970s, though, the global shipbuilding industry packed up and moved to Asia. Most of Malmö's seven wharfs closed down, leaving thousands unemployed and forcing a crisis of identity for the city.

An economic depression ensued, and the city sustained a further symbolic blow to its collective psyche as its main crane - a huge machine visible from miles around and known as the icon of the city - was exported to South Korea.

But Malmö has reinvented itself in a a way that should make representatives from Savannah and other Georgia cities take note, said Nils Eric Svensson, an economic developer in Skåne, the southernmost region of Sweden, where Malmö is the capital.

Until the 1600s, Skåne was a part of Denmark, and now the region lies close to Copenhagen, just across a 10-mile strait known as the Öresund.

GlobalAtlanta interviewed Mr. Svensson during a recent trip to Sweden to provide special coverage of companies visiting Savannah April 20-22 for the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce's Entrepreneurial Days conference.

Mr. Svensson is business development manager for Region Skåne, a local economic development organization. At eDays, he hopes to find partners for local companies and possibly attract U.S. firms to begin operations in Skåne.

During a tour of Malmö, he told GlobalAtlanta that after the wharf crisis, city officials decided to revamp its industries to reflect the changing realities of the global economy.

Especially in the last decade, those efforts have paid dividends, and Malmö has become "more or less a city in transformation," Mr. Svensson said.

The city has a young and cosmopolitan population of about 250,000 people. Sweden has welcomed so many immigrant refugees that about half the students in Malmö public schools have non-Swedish parents, Mr. Svensson said.

Lund, a nearby university town with nearly 50,000 students, provides a steady flow of scientific and technical expertise that keep the region competitive in its main sectors: logistics, clean technology and sustainability, biotechnology and information technology.

Cell phone manufacturer Sony Ericsson has its research and development operations there, as do many large pharmaceutical, biotechnology and food products companies. The area is also vying to be the site of a new European Spallation Center for the research of atomic particles. The center would provide about 5,000 jobs and build on the business and scientific expertise already evident there, Mr. Svensson said.

"There's a very very open, expressed interest that research ought to be put to business activity," he said.

Malmö hasn't totally left its maritime heritage behind. The city still has a growing port, a maritime university and a strong logistics industry. But Malmö's economy has shifted in focus away from its industrial heritage. Buildings once used in steel production and shipbuilding have been renovated to house companies that make products like steering technology for ships or animation programs for cellular phones.

"What we now see is a total transformation to a new society, what we can call the new economy, the knowledge economy," said Mr. Svensson.

Malmö didn't achieve this on its own. In 2000, a new bridge opened that connected Skåne with Denmark, facilitating the flow of people and goods across the Öresund. Malmö is at least six hours away from Stockholm by train. With the new bridge, it's just a 20-minute train ride from Copenhagen, and now the city is reaping substantial economic benefit from its newfound proximity to the Danish capital.

Because of lower costs in Malmö, many Danish enterprises have begun to set up shop on the Swedish side of the harbor.

Although he felt almost "treasonous" saying it, Danish businessman Kent Fallesen said if he were setting up a new operation in the region, he'd almost certainly choose the Swedish side, citing lower costs and the ability to attract the same workforce.

Mr. Fallesen, now CEO of Eduka A/S, spent five years as Denmark's trade commissioner in Atlanta, where he pioneered a business incubator for Danish companies called the Accelerator. He received GlobalAtlanta in his Copenhagen home during the recent trip.

Malmö would be the "right place to have an international incubator in this region," he said.

Mr. Svensson of Region Skåne had to look no further than his own neighborhood to see effects of the regional integration. The three houses on his street that sold last year were bought by Danes, he said.

"That gives a very brief picture of how the interactions are going on," he said. There's also the fact that 10 years ago, work would take him five times to Stockholm in a year and once to Copenhagen. Now, that ratio has flipped.

Another outgrowth of the bridge is the fact that Copenhagen's and Malmö's ports are now operated by the same company. Mr. Svensson visited Savannah with a Copenhagen-Malmö delegation in 2007 to examine the operations of the fast-growing port in the coastal Georgia city.

As if to bring home the idea of Malmö's transformation, Mr. Svensson pointed out the 54-story skyscraper that in 2005 replaced the giant crane as the city's most identifiable structure.

The HSB Turning Torso is a residential tower designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

It symbolizes that things are happening in Malmö, Mr. Svensson said.

"I've been working in and close to this area for all my time, but I have never experienced a development like we have now," he said.

Malmö hosted eDays in 2007 and will be seeking more collaboration at the upcoming Savannah conference.