Europe's hottest startup capitals: Stockholm

Four times a year, a hundred or so entrepreneurs and a handful of venture capitalists meet at a secret location in Stockholm to play poker. "It's a closed group and only by invitation," says Kristofer Arwin, the founder of PriceRunner and TestFreaks, who started the event out of his office four years ago. "We were 20 entrepreneurs. Now there are about 160 in the network." At the most recent event, Spotify's chief product officer Gustav Söderström rubbed shoulders with boo. com founder Enrst Malmsten and Lea Bajc, a hyperactive venture capitalist. "You become friends with these guys," says Arwin. "All these people have got to know each other and have started new businesses, and become investors in other businesses, pretty much because they got to know each other in these circumstances."

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Swedes' perceived rudeness 'isn't racially motivated'

UK native Suhail Din sparked a heated debate among The Local's readers with his reflections on why Swedes refused to talk to him and his family during a recent visit to Stockholm. Contributor Ruben Brunsveld examines why. 

On August 15th, The Local published an opinion article called: ‘We never had a single conversation with a Swede’. 

Two weeks later the article has received more than 300 comments and has been shared on Facebook almost 600 times. So now that the dust has settled it is time for a more nuanced look at why this contribution sparked so many emotional reactions.

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Sweden Freezes Out the Competition in Clean Sweep

The Swedish government supports the efforts of ten Swedish regions united to attract investors from major IT companies, starting with a pitch to Silicon Valley environmentalists. Invest Sweden is the Swedish government's promotional agency established to endorse the efforts of these ten regions united in efforts to 'green the cloud' by investing in Sweden's environmentally suitable location. 

Sweden has inherently efficient environmental characteristics for maintaining inexpensive data storage centers. Clean energy, secure resources, year-round clean climate controlled facilities more easily maintained through a cooler climate with one of the most stable electricity grids in the world, combine to make Sweden a haven for cloud perpetuity.

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What can Canada learn from Sweden's business culture?

Canada's “insular” tech startup firms can learn one key thing from Swedish firms: openness, says the Ambassador of Sweden to Canada. 

Sweden's small size and geographic positioning on the fringe of Europe foster an open attitude when it comes to receiving ideas from the rest of the world, said Teppo Tauriainen during a visit to Toronto's MaRS Discovery District. Meanwhile Canada's large presence in North America and sole border shared with a friendly superpower to the south might leave our startups with a more inward-looking mentality. 

“I think that could be one area maybe Canadian companies aren't as brave as Swedish companies are,” he says.

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Investing in Sweden – A Cold Country with a Hot Economy

What comes to mind when you think of Sweden: Blonde hair, pale skin, and a pair of sullen blue eyes piercing through a whiteout - or an economy that grew 5.5% last year? 

Too often, it's the former when it should be the latter.  

Indeed, chances are you've never thought about investing in Sweden. But the country that is so often thought of as being cold - if it's thought of at all - is actually overheating. 

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Sweden ranked third in the Global Competitiveness Report

Sweden once again change places with Singapore in the Global Competitiveness Report as we are placed third behind Switzerland (1) and Singapore (2). 

Northern and Western European countries dominate the top 10 with Sweden (3rd), Finland (4th), Germany (6th), the Netherlands (7th), Denmark (8th) and the United Kingdom (10th). Japan remains the second-ranked Asian economy at 9th place, despite falling three places since last year.

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Women's entrepreneurship in Sweden

At present, one out of every four businesses in Sweden is run by a woman, and women account for 32 per cent of new business start-ups. This means that there is great growth potential for women's entrepreneurship. The Government wants to improve the opportunities for women to start, develop and run businesses in order to unleash the growth potential for women's entrepreneurship.

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Sweden tops Global Creativity Index

"In the Global Creativity Index by Martin Prosperity Institute, Sweden was ranked in top. USA, Finland, Denmark and Australia was placed 2-5. 

The study by the Martin Prosperity Institute ranks 82 countries on their creativity. It turns out that creativity is a driving force in the economy: the study found great correlations between creativity and economic progress, human development, and happiness, among other factors."

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Sweden plans to be world's first oil-free economy

"Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations. 

The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months."

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