Finland’s Minister of employment and the economy, Mauri Pekkarinen, has announced last week that Finland will be adding more capability to commercialise innovations with a €45 million fund. The fund is put together from governmental organisations such as Tekes and Finnvera’s seed financier Vera.
The aim of the new fund is to attract more international talent from overseas to help the companies grow and also enable more targeted investments. One of the ways international talent is attracted is the financial upside. The goverment is willing to invest into these companies, if a private sector individual (person or organisation) invests. Thus the financial upside is the invested amount in the company.
Not that much new there, but they have managed to renew and rationalise the investment process somewhat. Before, the investment decisions were made in the public sector organisations. With the new fund and model, the investment decisions will be made mostly by the market and private sector. So in essence, when before the public sector investments were leveraged with private sector investments – the tables have turned in this new model. Something definitely worth experimenting with.
However, The Economist had a good piece on entrepreneurship titled Heroic Entrepreneurs that sheds some light into the Finnish ways of work. Direct quote follows:
If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes almost all the difference.’ You can build as many incubators as you like, but if only 3% of the population want to be entrepreneurs, as in Finland, you will have trouble creating an entrepreneurial economy.
So in the end, it might not have nothing to do with the amount of money around if people do not want to go down that road. This is a difficult and a very interesting question that has yet to be answered. Which goes first, the culture to create businesses or the ecosystem to support entrepreneurship?
Biovakka Suomi Oy 
Bitbar
Sadly they go hand in hand.
Many people won’t do startups.
Those that do have a hard time getting money.
I’m very positive about this fund. Private investors basically double their money if their company is Finnish (in theory). Let’s see what happens
I’ve heard from quite many sources after posting this that many people believe this is a very good thing for the whole industry. So might be that I’ve misinterpreted the article too much.
Nevertheless, I am looking forwards to how this will spice up the market.
I’m not sure if there’s a real, fundamental lack of entrepreneurial spirit in Finland. Or rather, people are prepared to work hard here, and good skills are highly valued (not just a party culture, or whatever), but there is still a slight lack of good examples to look up to, or they are very established. So it’s not yet ‘cool’ to be an entrepreneur, and many efforts are frowned upon (until they are big successes, of course ;-)
I do think efforts like ArcticStartup is rapidly changing that.
Kristoffer,
I subscribe to your view, except that I believe we are right in the eye of the storm. I believe we have left the ‘being uncool’ and have already one leg on the ‘being cool’ side. I agree on the lack of good examples, but that’s changing too. For one, look at you guys.
It’s always so hard to tell what’s happening when you’re living it and it’s always so clear when you look back the point of rupture after a few years.
I’m a Vietnamese, and I can say that Finland is similar to Vietnam, in a way that high academic and corporate positions are considered “cooler” than entrepreneurial positions.
Finland seems to have much better facility, legal environment and information resource for entrepreneurs. However, I do know that Vietnam’s entrepreneurial spirit and activities are being promoted quite heavily in mainstream media.
We have ‘Tuoi Tre’ (aka. “Youth”) and ‘Thanh Nien’ (aka. “Young People”) two of the biggest newspapers in the country that have articles on entrepreneurs in every sector, from high tech to absolutely normal stuffs. And gosh, I’ve just read a March article about a young entrepreneur in pig breeding! (I remember in the past there were others in fish and hamster breeding, too).
We also have quite a few TV shows about entrepreneurial lives and business pitching competitions for students and young people (such as ‘Khoi nghiep’, aka. “Start-up” or ‘Lam giau khong kho’, aka. “Getting rich isn’t hard”) . The shows may require participants to display their real-life selling skills or making public pitches, or just to introduce well-known entrepreneurs.
I don’t know if the fire in Finland can become hotter than that, but the point is: just how many people will come to know this phrase “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good”.
http://bitly.com/pgHk
I concur with you guys.
My own opinion has always been that is all about culture and partly about monetary incentives. There is no clear reason why Silicon Valley operates as well as it does, its about the small things. But still, entreprenuership a financial decision as well and taking risks in to consideration the pay should be higher(and this is where goverments can help).
Difference between entreprenuership and other-cool-things is that, when you know whats cool, you can start the other-cool-thing quite easily and fast. With music, clothing or activity trends, you don’t need to know that much and there will be peers to guide you in, eg. skateboarding or starting a rock band. Both need great deal of skill and pratice to master, but you can start easily and be part of the community from the day one.
With entreprenuership and business it’s different. If you’re young and have no business experience, it might be a hard to start and even harder to actually make something people want. You need to learn the right language, sacrifice time and some money, do all kinds of boring paperwork, tell your parents to stop worrying about school and there isn’t anyone to absolutely tell you what to do. Since currently(it wasnt always like that) society likes to keep teenagers and young people locked up in institutions for most of the time, there are not so many peers to help you.
I belive it’s the same thing with more experienced people, who have already work for some years. They might be good going their job which they are specially trained for but they might know nothing about running a business or don’t how to get started.
Entreprenuer and business world doesn’t suck you in, you have to look for it and cram yourself in. So even entreprenuership would be about as cool as the other side of the pillow, there is still problems and frankly, it’s hard.