Finland wired for the future
straitstimes.asia1.com.sg
HIREN PHUKEN examines what's behind Finland's success story
TOMORROW and beyond. The Finns are focused on the future, racing along the Information Superhighway to make knowledge the single most important production factor.
Like Singapore, Finland's society is always pondering its future, trying to analyse the larger trends to pre-empt tomorrow's problems today.
And like Singapore, Finland, too, is a country obsessed with being the No. 1 in everything it does.
For instance, Finns have more mobile phones per capita than any other nation. In terms of Internet connectivity, Finland is tops.
A survey published earlier this year by the Lausanne-based International Institute of Management and Development ranked Finland as the second most competitive country in the world, next only to the United States.
Last year, the World Economic Forum declared it the world's most competitive economy.
But the most striking facet of Finland's society is how information technology is at the forefront of just about everything - from mundane products to work to home life.
Said a posting on the Net from Invest in Finland Bureau, a national organisation promoting foreign direct investment: 'Banks, schools, libraries and hospitals exist virtually as well as physically... online banking is so well-established that individuals engaging in traditional banking are the clear minority.
'Finns use the least physical cash per capita of any people in the world...'
This obsession with advanced technology may, in fact, have to do with its history and the country's rugged geography.
Telecom consultant Riso Linturi told CNN that Finns have historically put a premium on keeping in touch - a practical heritage in a country where having information helped you to survive the extreme weather.
'Our heroes are heroes of wisdom and information, not heroes of war,' CNN quoted him as saying.
To be sure, Finland was not always so avant garde in its outlook.
Like Singapore, the north European nation was a colony for a long time. It was ruled for centuries by its neighbour Sweden and then by Russia, depriving it of growth.
And like Singapore, Finland has a modest population - 5.1 million at last count.
If Singapore after its independence was described immediately as a mosquito-ridden town with slums, Finland after World War II had to cope with high inflation, unemployment and an unfavourable balance of trade.
In fact, telecommunications' giant Nokia - which many consider to be a microcosm for the macrocosm that is Finland - started out in a humble fashion, making rubber boots and toilet paper.
Like Finland then, Nokia, too, was constrained to produce Old Economy goods by the demands of its neighbour, the then Soviet Union.
In fact, Nokia started suffering big losses in the early 1990s following its diversification into consumer electronics, says Dr Antti Kasvio of Finland's University of Tampere in a paper published on the Internet.
'Despite tough savings measures, the losses continued to rise, and the whole company fell into a deep crisis. In 1992, Jorma Ollila, the former director of the small but highly successful mobile phones division, was elected CEO for the whole company,' the author notes.
Under his leadership, the company decided to focus all its resources in telecommunications in the future.
At about the same time, the new digital standard for mobile telephones - the global system for mobile communications (GSM) - came into use in Europe. It was then that the fortunes of Nokia, the first manufacturer to have large-scale production-ready GSM phones, took off.
As competitors began to catch up, Nokia pushed the envelop further by asking itself: 'Why should mobile phones be staid gadgets?' That thinking led it to come up with phone designs that to this day bewitch customers.
It also helped that its domestic market - which at one time had 800 phone companies - was considered one of the world's most competitive.
This hyper-competitive market proved to be a blessing in disguise as Nokia used the opportunity to hone its marketing skills further.
And despite its pre-eminence in the market, Nokia is not one to rest on its laurels. It has continued to focus on the future - funnelling generous sums into research and development (R&D) to brace itself for tomorrow's challenges.
According to its Research Centre website, its R&D spending was raised this year to 3 billion euro (S$5.2 billion), a figure that represents 9.6 per cent of total net sales.
It said that at the beginning of this year, around 35 per cent of its 54,000 staff worldwide work-ed in R&D.
That's not all. Apart from its core business units that are on a constant lookout for new developments in their own areas, Nokia has also set up a Ventures Organisation.
In the words of Nokia president Pekka Ala-Pietila, this unit 'takes a broader view to push the frontiers past what we can do today to what we can envision for tomorrow and beyond'.
Thanks to Nokia's outstanding sales figures, cash comes flooding into Finland. The BBC noted in a report last year that the value of Nokia's net sales added up to about the same as the annual budget of the Finnish government.
An even more impressive achievement was that Nokia single-handedly raised the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by more than 1.5 per cent in 1999.
Like Nokia, it is tomorrow and beyond that the Finns are preoccupied with.
For its part, the government invests heavily in research and education. It also strives to promote innovation and is on the lookout constantly for new growth areas.
National R&D spending - including contributions from the public sector, businesses and universities - was estimated to exceed 3.5 per cent of GDP last year, making Finland a global leader in such spending per capita.
Part of the plan to underscore R&D has been the setting up of technology parks where facilities are offered for research projects that bond industry and universities.
From resource-based basics to information-centred technologies can be a giddy transformation. But Finland, described by some as the most wired nation that needs no wires to stay connected, is racing ahead to bring about that change in Internet time. |
