We at the Centre for Business History in Stockholm have long helped organizations create structured archives and use their historical material as a strategic asset for business development. Learn more about how we work here.
Founded in 1974, the Centre for Business History in Stockholm today has over 40 years of experience in creating structured and professional corporate archives, physical as well as digital, for some of Sweden’s largest companies. We have also helped them for just as long to make use of their history, turning historical material into a strategic asset for business development. Our broad knowledge base allows us to easily customize each project, based on what our customer needs, regardless of age, size or ownership.
Our archive services: You own the archive, we manage it.
Every company has a heritage. A history that is a unique to that organization and that cannot be copied. It doesn’t matter if the company is 1, 10 or 100 years old. It’s there in all the documents and artifacts that are created, either physically or – more commonly now – digitally. We’re talking about minutes, meeting notes, drawings, marketing material, ad campaigns, business deals and internal memos. About project plans, correspondence, client magazines, quotations, blue prints, business deals – and about photos, loads of photos.
When we help organizations to create a structured historical archives, we often start by making an inventory of which documents and artifacts that are most important and where they may be. Our professional archivists asses and audit, amass and sort, and make a full inventory so that your historical archive is both easily accessible and easy to expand.
When we are done, you have a grip on your company’s heritage in the form of a structured business archive. Then, regardless if you choose to keep the archive or outsource it to our facilities, you have a unique asset for your internal and external communication. Bringing order to historical files is also often a prerequisite if you want to meet your legal and business obligations.
Since history is created all the time, we also help you set acquisition and preservation policies, we gladly interview today’s coworkers to capture their oral history, and we create reference copies of your websites.
Typical archive services that we offer are then:
Editorial services: Historical storytelling that builds your business
A company’s heritage is a story that is uniquely yours. It is the force behind your brand, your organization, your business. We call it history marketing when you use the energy of a true story. Tell your history to build today’s business.
Every company has a story. A heritage that is a unique to that organization. It is a narrative that builds trust and creates new business, a leverage that we like to call history marketing.
A structured archive is your best source for history marketing. But even if your historical material is spread across locations and unsorted, we can help you. Our archivists and editors will still find ways to research your history, interpret your historical material, give it context and highlight the most telling and significant parts of it. We work with confirmed storytelling, based on authentic material.
All efficient history marketing starts with understanding your company’s current situation and ambitions, to help us focus your historical storytelling. But regardless what your goals and audiences are, we will identify authentic historical material that propels you today.
We will help you tell a business history that is both interesting, relevant and authentic. To do that, we use a three-step process for history marketing:
