Har precis hälsat välkommen till en spännande konferens som arrangeras av Nordic Development Forum isamarbete med Microsoft ;”The Nordic IT Powerhouse: Regional Growth througt Nordic/Baltic Collaboration”.
Microsoft har under de senaste åren gjort sina största investeringar i Norden/Baltikum och företaget är mycket intresserat av vad som gör att det är sådan intressant utveckling på detta område i denna norra del av världen. Trots lågkonjunktur skapas det nya jobb inom sektorn, en stor andel av befolkningen använder IT-tjänster dagligdags. Så frågan/utmaningen är – vad kan vi göra tillsammans för att bli än starkare. Som en av talarna konstaterade; jag kunde flyga hit till Stockholm från Estland utan några gränsproblem men om jag vill att min läkare ska kunna skriva ut recept så att jag kan ta ut det här i Stockholm är det omöjligt. Det finns mycket som kan göras för att riva gränser mellan våra länder. Länder som alla har mycket väl utvecklade data- och informationssystem men som bara används inom landet och inte över gränserna. Tänkvärt tycker jag.
Detta var min inledande hälsning till konferensen.
Nordic IT Powerhouse conference
Stockholm City Hall, 15th April 2013
Ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to Stockholm and the City Hall!
The Stockholm region is diverse, innovative and globally connected. Stockholm is one of the fastest growing cities in Europe and the largest city in Scandinavia, a City with an open, supportive and stable business environment. Stockholm’s cosmopolitan energy is a magnet for talent – and the region welcomes the skills, capital, ideas and culture that new residents and investors contribute to our economy. Our excellent quality of life, the combination of a vibrant downtown area with closeness to nature, creates the unique Stockholm lifestyle. The region stands for 45 % of Sweden’s population growth.
Stockholm is often considered a leader in adopting new technologies and setting new consumer trends. Many companies use Stockholm as a test market. When PWC rank international cities, in its report Cities of Opportunity, Stockholm comes out 5th after New York, London, Toronto and Paris. But we are no 1 re Intellectual capital and innovation, and no 1 Health, safety and security. We also score high re technology readiness.
Stockholm is an innovative region in clean-tech, ICT , life science and one of the leading gaming clusters. There are a lot of very good ideas and the challenge is to turn these ideas into companies and products. From a city perspective, we seek ways to facilitate this process.
Almost 20 years ago, the city decided to build a fiber-optic network throughout the municipality, open to all operators. The business idea of the city owned company Stokab is to offer dark fiber capacity, a basic service, to carriers for less than it would cost them to install it themselves. The strategy makes it possible for small companies to develop ideas without the burden of heavy investments. They can hire the capacity they need from Stokab. This ended the era of monopoly distribution and has led to a fascinating development both regarding price, services, start up companies and innovations.
Today, the 1.2 million kilometre network has more than 100 operators and almost 500 enterprises as primary customers. Since 2012, all public housing and 90% of all households have fiber. The access to high speed connections, (1.000 Mbit/s) is also one reason why more than 92% of stockholmers use internet on a regular base. The national goal set up by the government is 90% of all households by 2020, 100Mbit/s.
For Stockholm, Stokab has been a major source of success. As a city, we supply the basic infrastructure. Companies, academia and others come up with innovative ideas and great companies. The Economist recently published a special report about the Nordic Countries, mentioning the Stockholm start-up syndrome. The magazine was impressed with the ecosystem for the start-up scene in Stockholm, with so many good companies. Stockholm is the home of Skype, Spotify, Mojang and Dice.
Ladies and gentlemen,
A City strategy can make a difference.
The City has also adopted an e-strategy. One part is to develop e-services for citizens – services helping stockholmers to compare schools before choosing, providers for elderly care etc. We are working hard in order to improve the service to Stockholm’s business community via e-services; to reduce bureaucracy, improve accessibility, provide prompt handling of cases and provide good and comprehensive information. The service brings together advice, administration and contacts to entrepreneurs from the City and its various activities in one place.
Another part is the action plan for open data. As the first City in Sweden – and perhaps in the world?- the city invited companies and people to an open competition for new ideas and the development of ideas – The Open Stockholm Award 2012.
City data re parking, transports, construction, environment, air-quality, tourism are free and accessible via URLs/links. The result was great – we got a lot of new ideas and apps. And we will continue to provide more open city data.
Because the challenge is to develop the business climate in Stockholm even more. The City has an important role in order to stimulate innovations. Open data is one part, to use public procurement as a tool for stimulating innovation is another and to develop a closer cooperation between the city, universities and companies via for example Open labs is a third part.
But we need to do more. We need to educate, attract and retain top talents to be globally competitive. That is our common challenge. In Stockholm, we have the world’s best school computer network, according to PWC. The challenge now is to use it wisely, and get all schools, from preschool to university, to use IT as part of the education in a smart way. One example is the teacher Daniel Bark at high school Norra Real who I met recently. His tool is Youtube, he records his lessons ahead, and sends the films to his pupils in preparation for class. That way, he can spend all his time during the lesson discussing the solutions and helping the students.
Finally, although I am convinced that we need leadership from governments we must also show leadership locally and encourage initiatives and an early deployment of best practices amongst cities. An example is a seminar (in English) organised by the Stockholm IT-region on the 14th of May – broadcasted via the Swedish innovation Bambuser – on the topic of how creative cities come about and what they can learn from one another. I welcome you all to tune in, but we need more initiatives like this.
Today’s conference is also one such a great initiative. We need to meet and talk to learn from each other in order to come out at the fore front in the international competition.
I hope you will have an interesting and inspiring conference, and a wonderful time in Stockholm. With this, I would like to hand over to today’s moderator – Mr Niclas Mattsson, Senior Publisher at the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise!
Thank you!