Sweden tops IT economy ranking (USA places 5th)

www.thelocal.se ^ | 25/03/2010 | Paul O'Mahony

[WesternCulture]

“For some very FEW things they have made some significant improvements, but real world-impact technologies.....no.”

- That statement is plain ridiculous. According to US government statistics, only ten nations have more American patents than Sweden. Sweden is dwarfed by the US alright but despite our population size, there are just a handful of nations on this planet that outshine us.

If you would bother to study the past and present of the large areas of technology you mentioned, you'd quickly discover that there are very few truly significant areas of technology, if any, which more or less completely have been developed and mastered by a single nation. For instance, USA isn't the only nation that matters in the field of aviation although it is a world leader. USA didn't invent nuclear power although it was the first nation to build large reactors for breeding plutonium. Only some years after the Manhattan Project, Soviet had nuclear weapons and in 1947, Sweden initiated a nuclear power program and built its first reactor in 1954. In terms of nuclear weapons, USA was years ahead at the end of WWII, but it was not light years ahead and just like Soviet but unlike Sweden, America was aided largely by foreign European experts in developing nuclear power.

Examples of MAJOR technological/scientific domains where Sweden has made not only significant contributions, but has been and are today even world leading:

- Telecommunications (what Ericsson and Sweden as a whole has accomplished in this department few, if any, companies and nations, can compete with; the one-piece handset to begin with, the first true mobile phone call was made already in the 1950s in Sweden, digital telecommunication was brought to a whole new level in the 1970s through the AXE system, the first fully-automatic cellular phone system - the NMT 450 - was predominantly a Swedish accomplishment. Furthermore, the practical implementation of GSM technology and its development is largely in the hands of Ericsson even if other companies cooperate closely with them, like Microsoft does and yet others compete with them).

- IT in general (apart from telecommunications, Sweden and individual Swedes have made extremely important contributions in thousands of areas, early there was the ingenious sun valve used in lighthouses turning the beacon on and off using daylight, more recent areas are GPS/AIS, the computer mouse, the monitor, artificial intelligence in general)

- Heart Surgery (for instance, the first pacemaker as well as the first pacemaker operation.)

- Brain Surgery/Neurological Surgery (the gamma knife was a milestone in this branch of medicine)

- Gastroenterology (Treatment of dyspepsia, peptic ulcer disease, gastroesophageal reflux disease and Zollinger-Ellison syndrome was revolutionized by the largely Swedish invention of omeprazole some decades ago).

- Pharmaceutics and Biotech in general (British-Swedish Astra Zeneca is the world's 7th largest company in the pharmaceutics business by revenue and by all means one of the companies that spend the most money on advanced research. Much of the research as well as production is located in Sweden. Karolinska Institute in Stockholm is one of the largest and most significant medical universities in all of Europe, Stockholm-Uppsala as well as Copenhagen-Malmö-Lund are definitely biotech/pharmaceutics clusters of global importance although many of the companies active there are not Swedish ones, just like in the case of the IT hub of Kista in Stockholm.).

- Railroad Technology (We were present already at the Rainhill Trials and Swedish “Novelty” was in fact, in many ways a superior construction in relation to Stephenson's “The Rocket”, Sweden has also since long been a world leader in railroad technology, especially when it comes to electrical locomotives and high speed train technology).

- Mass Production (Henry Ford was, of course, central to the innovation of the assembly line, but from a technological perspective, Henry Leland and Swedish Carl Edvard Johansson, were perhaps even more important. Sweden is today a world leader in robot technology and automatized industrial production in general, I'm especially thinking of Swedish-Swiss ABB)

- General Mechanics (I'd say the spherical ball bearing is the most important Swedish contribution to this huge and basic area, as most forms of industrial processes and technological constructions from skateboards to spaceships couldn't function properly without them)

- Automotive Technology (turbo technology, ignition solutions, car safety, four wheel drive solutions and besides, Sweden is one of the world leaders in development and production of large buses, heavy trucks and together with Germany also HIGH QUALITY cars unlike Japan, China, South Korea, France, Italy etc,)

- Food Processing, Packaging and Preservation (the modern refrigerator, the cream separator, the centrifugal separator, the first milk pasteurizer. We were also pioneers in using paper cartoons for packaging food products like the tetra pack. The Swedish company Findus were world leaders in deep frozen food technology already 60 years ago. In 1962, it was taken over by Swiss Nestlé and this merger explains much of Nestlé’s success)

- Defense technology (stealth warships, stealth subs, fighter planes, advanced artillery technology like the M982 Excalibur used in Iraq, advanced tanks etc, etc. Today, much of it is an issue of Swedish-British-American cooperation)

Mining Technology (I'd call Atlas Copco rather important)

These “very FEW things” are major areas of technology and Sweden belongs to the world leaders and pioneers of them, even if a small number of nations are even more important in the history of modern technology and production. They might be around 8-10 or so, but there are hardly more than 15 of them.

By the way, the original meaning of the German expression “über alles” has nothing to do with claiming to be superior to all other nations. Rather, the message is that Germans, as a nation, ought to place the survival, unity and flourishing of their own country above petty individual or regional interests in life. Apart from that, I made it clear early in this thread that what is going on today in terms of IT-revolutions in Stockholm isn't solely about Swedish accomplishments. American companies like IBM and Microsoft and others play a very important role in this development.