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The Nordic region is becoming a hothouse of entrepreneurship (2013)

84 points by martincmartin 12y ago

amirmc 12y ago
From a comment on the article: "Great article, but with slight historical revisionism: Tekes was established in 1983 and Finnvera was created in 1999, when Nokia was still on its way up. The roots of Finland's national innovation system go back to 1960 and 1970s. Even Nokia's original success is partly attributed to this system. It is incorrect to portray its creation as a response to Nokia's recent troubles." In other words, it takes sustained long term effort and thinking to promote innovation.
- bjelkeman-again 12y ago
  The general narrative today about something like this often seems to forget what came before. For example the music industry in Sweden is doing very well and most people I hear talking about why mentions the musical schooling kids get from the beginning as a source. But the narrative about this doesn't often mention this in my experience, as it is probably considered a boring story.
  - Gravityloss 12y ago
    This is in stark contrast to Finnish music and physical education traditions which have large parts of repression, humiliation and army-like strict control. Depends a lot on the teacher you have...
    - tuukkah 12y ago
      This definitely used to be the case 20 years ago or so, but I would say Finland has done well in music and sports for a country of 6 million people.
- whatevsbro 12y ago
  > In other words, it takes sustained long term effort and thinking to promote innovation. No, it only takes getting out of the way and letting innovators innovate. Our 60%+ taxes are not conducive to innovation.
- Gravityloss 12y ago
  True, Nokia got a lot of phone (maybe even most) networking and mobile phone technology from the government company Televa which it cunningly took over in the eighties. Companies' histories are often little known.
denzil_correa 12y ago
The article is dated Jan 31st 2013.
- dang 12y ago
  Thanks. We added that to the title.
tuukkah 12y ago
Helsinki started to host a festival for gamers in the early 1990s. Importantly, what they really mean is a festival for multimedia programming, the Assembly demo party: "The first Assembly was held from July 24 to July 26, 1992, in Kauniainen. It was organized by the Amiga demo groups Complex and Rebels, and the PC demo group Future Crew." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_%28demo_party%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_%28demo_party%29 There's a chapter to be written about the last year with the exits including Nokia Devices to Microsoft Mobile, Supercell to the Japanese GungHo, and Moves to Facebook. These prove the existence of liquidity and create more for the next startups.
durbin 12y ago
Not as surprising when you realize that 95% of tech startups in Silicon Valley are built on a foundation of Finnish software - Linux and MySQL.
- BugBrother 12y ago
  One of the MySQL founders is Finnish, but it was in Sweden. (InnoDB was Finnish, iirc.)
  - durbin 12y ago
    Many people consider the Finnish founder, Michael Widenius, to be the main author of MySQL and it was named after his daughter My. I would definitely consider it to be Finnish software at the very least equal to, if not more than, Swedish.
- Gravityloss 12y ago
  and SSH and IRC...
davidgerard 12y ago
Not really. Rovio did in fact try to extend the brand and get new brands going. But nobody was interested in anything except Angry Birds, so now they're just pushing that brand - rather than come up with a new brand for a new game, they just shove the Angry Birds into it (e.g., Angry Birds Go!).
ersii 12y ago
I do not consider it strange, like the 2013 Economist article does, that "too many successful start-ups choose to sell themselves to foreign markets/multinationals instead of being local champions" - considering how small the Swedish and Finnish markets are. I don't find it strange that they take capital from foreign investors either - since I assume it's harder to get investment locally. According to the 2014 estimate, Finland has a population of 5,457,429 and Sweden has a population of 9,658,301 according to the 2013 census. If we add them up, that's a total of 15,115,730 (15.1M).

84 points by martincmartin 12y ago

From a comment on the article: "Great article, but with slight historical revisionism: Tekes was established in 1983 and Finnvera was created in 1999, when Nokia was still on its way up. The roots of Finland's national innovation system go back to 1960 and 1970s. Even Nokia's original success is partly attributed to this system. It is incorrect to portray its creation as a response to Nokia's recent troubles." In other words, it takes sustained long term effort and thinking to promote innovation.

bjelkeman-again 12y ago
The general narrative today about something like this often seems to forget what came before. For example the music industry in Sweden is doing very well and most people I hear talking about why mentions the musical schooling kids get from the beginning as a source. But the narrative about this doesn't often mention this in my experience, as it is probably considered a boring story.
- Gravityloss 12y ago
  This is in stark contrast to Finnish music and physical education traditions which have large parts of repression, humiliation and army-like strict control. Depends a lot on the teacher you have...
  - tuukkah 12y ago
    This definitely used to be the case 20 years ago or so, but I would say Finland has done well in music and sports for a country of 6 million people.
whatevsbro 12y ago
> In other words, it takes sustained long term effort and thinking to promote innovation. No, it only takes getting out of the way and letting innovators innovate. Our 60%+ taxes are not conducive to innovation.
Gravityloss 12y ago
True, Nokia got a lot of phone (maybe even most) networking and mobile phone technology from the government company Televa which it cunningly took over in the eighties. Companies' histories are often little known.

denzil_correa 12y ago

The article is dated Jan 31st 2013.

dang 12y ago
Thanks. We added that to the title.

tuukkah 12y ago

Helsinki started to host a festival for gamers in the early 1990s. Importantly, what they really mean is a festival for multimedia programming, the Assembly demo party: "The first Assembly was held from July 24 to July 26, 1992, in Kauniainen. It was organized by the Amiga demo groups Complex and Rebels, and the PC demo group Future Crew." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_%28demo_party%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_%28demo_party%29 There's a chapter to be written about the last year with the exits including Nokia Devices to Microsoft Mobile, Supercell to the Japanese GungHo, and Moves to Facebook. These prove the existence of liquidity and create more for the next startups.

durbin 12y ago

Not as surprising when you realize that 95% of tech startups in Silicon Valley are built on a foundation of Finnish software - Linux and MySQL.

BugBrother 12y ago
One of the MySQL founders is Finnish, but it was in Sweden. (InnoDB was Finnish, iirc.)
- durbin 12y ago
  Many people consider the Finnish founder, Michael Widenius, to be the main author of MySQL and it was named after his daughter My. I would definitely consider it to be Finnish software at the very least equal to, if not more than, Swedish.
Gravityloss 12y ago
and SSH and IRC...

davidgerard 12y ago

Not really. Rovio did in fact try to extend the brand and get new brands going. But nobody was interested in anything except Angry Birds, so now they're just pushing that brand - rather than come up with a new brand for a new game, they just shove the Angry Birds into it (e.g., Angry Birds Go!).

ersii 12y ago

I do not consider it strange, like the 2013 Economist article does, that "too many successful start-ups choose to sell themselves to foreign markets/multinationals instead of being local champions" - considering how small the Swedish and Finnish markets are. I don't find it strange that they take capital from foreign investors either - since I assume it's harder to get investment locally. According to the 2014 estimate, Finland has a population of 5,457,429 and Sweden has a population of 9,658,301 according to the 2013 census. If we add them up, that's a total of 15,115,730 (15.1M).