Are Nordic countries particularly entrepreneurial? How do our societies perceive entrepreneurship as a career choice?
The perception already exists that the Nordic countries are among the most innovative in the world. The two most recent and comprehensive rankings supporting this belief came from the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Boston Consulting Group, both published in April 2009. The first of these studies ranked Japan as the most innovative country in the world, while in the second Singapore was at the top of the list. Nevertheless, Finland and Sweden ranked in the top ten for both reports, while Denmark and Norway also ranked impressively.
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COP 15 was a disappointment to many and there is now certainly a risk that policymakers leave the building, metaphorically speaking, leaving markets to take over and solve the environmental problems the best they can. Can they and should they?
Cleantech Scandinavia recently attempted to analyze Nordic cleantech patent application levels. The European Patent Office and OECD’s environmental directorate did a similar attempt analyzing cleantech patent application levels worldwide.
OECD carried out statistical analysis for basically all energy generation technologies showing a marked increase in wind, solar and hydro after the Kyoto agreement was signed. Their analysis also found that cleantech patent activity was dominated by Japan, US, Germany, Korea, Great Britain and France. (87% of solar photovoltaic patents were for instance handed in by Japan, US, Germany, Korea and France).
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Piipl is a Danish web service focused on improving the innovation processes of enterprises, government agencies, and researchers by facilitating user-driven innovation. The service could be used for product or service improvement, change management, user research, or any similar process benefiting from interaction of and input from multiple persons. Piipl has been created in cooperation by three Danish firms, Copenhagen Living Lab, Workz, and 23 Visual. Continue reading »
This is a relatively interesting move and possibly a trend may follow if this picks up more momentum. A few days ago Hammerkit took to the web designers to try out their service and challenge the traditional web principles. In other words, they are trying to get a dialogue going between designers and that sort to leverage their knowledge and also market the possibilities Hammerkit has to offer them.
Hammerkit is a Finnish company based in the Techonopolis Ventures incubation pipeline. They are developing a framework for web development to leverage modules for faster web application production. With the dialogue with designers – they will be holding webcast sessions to futher untie possible knots in the co-operation and perception people may have towards their service.
This is a very wise move in my opinion for Hammerkit. I’d argue that they should be positioned more in the crowdsourcing space to tap into the knowledge of the web designers to better suit their product to their use. However, Hammerkit is not the only working in this front. A few weeks ago Nokia announced together with Technopolis a Nokia Technopolis Innovation Mill project to open up their patent registry to startups.
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Earlier this month we had an ArcticEvening about startup financing and investments. The event was a success and a lot of topics were covered in general, but one area that could have been discussed more is the venture capital market at large and how it is changing – or is it?
Many blogs and online media sources, especially, have mentioned that during times of economic hardship innovation tends to flourish as talented people are laid off, or otherwise take the bait for entrepreneurship. Furthermore, large corporations that usually dominate the markets cut down on investments in order to cut down on expenses to keep the companies solvent and this gives excellent possibilities for startups to take market share.
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I had an excellent lunch today with Antti Akonniemi, the CEO and founder of Kisko Labs and Ville Vesterinen. Among other things, we discussed business models and how stuck up companies are in their methods of innovation. I mean think about it, at least we’ve come across a ton of different companies with a ton of consumer internet applications for all sorts of needs. But when we discuss what their business model is – it is usually limited to advertising, freemium, subscription, premium or some sort of mix of these.
However, I had a talk with an anonymous for now, but very successful entrepreneur earlier on this week and we discussed his new business idea about a service concept where the innovation was in the business model for the consumer. The service concept usually would cost around 1500e and nobody in their right mind would pay such money – looking at the current market and the way things are done. However, when you package it with a financial company and a monthly payment plan of 49e the whole scheme is beginning to look a lot more appealing, extremely appealing actually. The beauty of the idea is that my friend’s company does not have to take any of the financial risk as it’s “sold” to the financial organisation partnering in the business plan. I’m sorry I can’t disclose more here, but what I wanted to tell with this example is that with a simple business innovation you can create a lot more value for the consumer and thus create a lot better chance for the concept to fly.
Nevertheless, back to Kisko Labs – they’ve come up with an interesting concept for enabling new innovation in the Nordics. What Kisko Labs is trying is that they’re taking a pro active approach to web development for start-ups. They’re willing to do an equity swap in return for web development for start-ups with a great business idea. Kisko Labs has of course a healthy consulting and development business to support this cash flow-less venture. I believe this could prove a killer approach for startups with great ideas in a time when venture money is tight.
If you look at this from a larger scale – the last great business innovation (that flew big time in the consumer market) I saw, was the iTunes 0,99 USD/EUR for a track. You take the existing business and package it differently, economically. But seriously speaking – where are all the business innovations? Shouldn’t times like these be good drivers for new packaging of existing and already proven business cases?
Disclosure: We have some small scale innovation going on with Kisko Labs, which we will disclose just before Le Web.
Image by Vermin Inc. (CC: by-nc-sa)
The Institute for Innovation and Information Productivity has interviewed about 25000 people around the world on what they call innovation confidence. Finland has received 44 points of the 100 possible points, which makes it the one of the least thrilled by technology. We’re in the pack together with Slovenia, Turkey and the Netherlands.
This is very worrying, as we’ve been noted as one of the most technologically advanced countries, especially when it comes to the mobile phones and internet. Finland is usually considered in general a very early adapter of new technologies and thus it’s stressful to see this sort of attitude change.
Via New York Times and ReadWriteWeb.
iWillStudy.com
Unita
