Posted on 10/25/2007 5:50:50 AM PDT by WesternCulture
New Swedish companies are bursting with ideas in IT and biotech. It's time for international investors to sit up and take notice, says leading entrepreneur Johan Staël von Holstein.
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.se ...
“Kista Science City is the home to more companies, employees, and researchers that are highly specialized in ICT than ANY other ICT clusters in the world.”
However, the same site also states that Kista boasts
“more companies, employees, and researchers that are highly specialized in ICT than MOST other ICT clusters in the world.
Anyhow, Stockholm is indeed one of the most exciting cities of the world in the ICT area. At short distance from Stockholm we find another such ICT powerhouse, namely the dynamic Finnish cities of Helsinki (Finland’s capital), Tampere and Turku (Nokia is the most well know ICT company originating from this part of Europe).
Already by today, talking of the ICT cluster of Stockholm-Helsinki makes sense, but this isn’t very common. If it is to become more of a reality than it presently is, these regions have to be linked with railroads and freeways, not just with ferries and air traffic like they are now (some giant system of tunnels is probably the only solution as there is a large archipelago with a lot of wildlife located between Stockholm and Helsinki).
LOL! Sure, whatever you say...
“LOL! Sure, whatever you say...”
- Thank you for your precise and well-phrased reply.
What is this, some PR puff piece? Why is it on FR?
>> What is this, some PR puff piece? Why is it on FR?
“Sweden ahead of silicon valley” is a little over the top — maybe just a bit of nationalistic pride, eh WesternCulture?
HOWEVER...
The article is very interesting. In a nutshell, the author is saying that recently (over the last decade or so) young Swedes are breaking out of the “slaves to the welfare state” mold and becoming entrepreneurial in a big way.
A generation of Swedish entrepreneurs leaning more to the right is indeed worthy of a Free Republic post, IMHO...
Silicon Valley is home to the largest, most wealthy, tech and biotech firms in the world.
What does the author define as “Silicon Valley”? Northern California has expanded “Silicon Valley” to far beyond the Santa Clara Valley origination. That entire premise is just far fetched that Sweden has surpassed it. Percentage wise, perhaps. Sheer numbers, no way.
“Kista Science City is the home to more companies, employees, and researchers that are highly specialized in ICT than any other ICT clusters in the world.”
(source http://www.kista.com/en , their English web site)
This could be true if we’re talking about people and organizations being ‘HIGHLY specialized’ in the ICT field.
More people work in Silicon Valley than in Kista (which is just a small part of Stockholm). However, more people work in the greater Stockholm region (often refered to as The Lake Mälaren Valley - Mälardalen - here in Sweden) than in Silicon Valley and a lot of them are highly specialized in these kind of businesses.
I guess it’s more fruitful to compare (greater) Stockholm/Lake Mälaren Valley vs The Bay area.
A just, closer comparison between these two conurbations from a high-tech viewpoint might not end up portraying The Bay Area as being more of a high-tech region than Stockholm/The Lake Mälaren Valley. For whatever it’s worth in terms of national pride and such things..
“Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States...Some notable tech companies headquartered in the South Bay are Intel, AMD, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Google, eBay,and Yahoo!.”
In terms of producing advanced high tech solutions I think it’s safe to say a large number of companies based in Stockholm (or at least having a lot of employees there) can compete. Examples are Ericsson, ABB, Electrolux, Astra-Zeneca, Atlas Copco, SAAB, Tieto Enator, Scania, Telia-Sonera, WM-data.
These examples are Swedish or ‘part’ Swedish ones (for instance, a company like ABB is the result of a Swedish-Swiss merger and Astra-Zeneca of a Swedish-British dito).
‘Foreign’ high-tech companies with a lot of staff in the greater Stockholm area include GE healthcare, Pfizer, Microsoft, IBM and Cap Gemini.
One thing that ought to be remembered here is that an extremely large percentage of the Swedish workforce has advanced university education and are employed by large companies that often are very technology- and research- intensive. A country like Germany also possesses a highly skilled workforce, but the business life of Germany is not as dominated by such multinationals as its Swedish counterpart (even if Germany has a larger population and all that).
Wikepedia isn’t always the most accurate source! LOL!
“Silicon Valley” once referred to only the portion of the Santa Clara Valley between Palo Alto and San Jose. But now it extends over to the East Bay to Milpitas, Fremont, Pleasnton, Livermore, San Ramon and beyond.
“Wikipedia isn’t always the most accurate source!”
No, but when it comes to names, phrases, expressions etc that people search for a lot at wikipedia, the information is often reliable.
In this case, there seems to be many ideas about what Silicon Valley encompasses and what it does not. Two examples (from the discussion in connection to the Wikipedia article on Silicon Valley);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Silicon_Valley#Cities_in_Silicon_Valley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Silicon_Valley#Removed_Livermore_and_Pleasanton
I guess it’s just like the issue of what population different cities have. For instance, if we are to believe what books, tv programs and various articles inform us, the population of London is almost anywhere between 5 and 19 million inhabitants. I’ve come across hundreds of different figures and the only thing this information has in common is that it never is linked to any sort of definition of what ‘London’ actually includes.
Anyhow, if anyone would wish to compare the amount of high-tech competence in the Bay Area vs Sweden (or Greater Stockholm compared to Southern Bay area), I think it could be done without just producing a lot of nonsense.
If the analysis would be limited to computer and software products only, Stockholm/Sweden would probably be outdone by the Silicon Valley/Bay Area, but if one would include biotech and advanced industrial products like those of the arms industry, automotive industry and so on (which I think is fair, a product like a Volvo car is a high-tech product IMO - an excellent example of American-Swedish cooperation by the way), Sweden would probably look more impressive than the Bay Area.
When Sweden becomes Target One for the enemy, I will believe it. Until then, Silicon Valley is the premiere technology center of the world. I don’t have a dog in this fight, I moved from there to Research Triangle Park, NC. Another center of technology and biomedical research.
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