By Gwen Merchant
One word could probably sum up the success Finland has been having in the global economy, and why some of Sudbury’s business people are standing up and taking notice.
According to Darryl Lake, executive director and CEO of Northern Development for Advanced Technology (NORCAT), that word is “focused.”
Lake spoke at the Discover Finland forum held at Cambrian College last week. He said during his 1995 trip to Finland he was “very surprised” at what he learned.
“They had their science and technology focused,” Lake said.” You heard the term focused; they had their young people focused. They were also focused on Canada, which surprised me a lot.”
Their technology centres are “part and parcel” of their post-secondary education system, both at a technology level and university level, according to Lake.
The dilemma of youth out-migration from parts of northern Canada to the south, spurred Lake to find a country that had “best practices in job creation” and implement these best practices in the City of Greater Sudbury.
After looking at Japan, Germany, France and the United States, Lake took the advice of Glenn Toikka, vice-president of finance and administration at Cambrian College, and looked at Finland.
Lake says the technology centre situated in Oulu, called Technopolis, is the “best” technology centre he has ever seen. His counterpart at Technopolis “to this day” still helps him when he has questions about the direction to take in Canada.
According to Toikka, Canada seems to be a conduit for offset agreements between Finland and North America.
“Just one example is that we’ve been trying to link up small companies in Finland with similar-type companies in Canada, specifically Northern Ontario,” Toikka said. “ If a small mom-and-dad shop, for example, or a company with five or 10 people over there have a product that they would like to get over to North America, we would link that small company up with a company ideally in Sudbury or Northern Ontario that has the infrastructure and the marketplace to distribute and sell that product.
“Similarly, if a small company in Sudbury came up with a unique product and they wanted to get it over into Europe, the conduit we would use for that would be Finland and link them up with a small company that again has the contacts and infrastructure to market that particular product over there. So there are a number of areas like that we want to pursue.”
Toikka said he was “struck” with Finland’s entrepreneurial skills and their “drive” for technology, as well as their sincerity in terms of bringing products to the marketplace.
Finland has moved up from ranking fifth in most competitive businesses in the world, to ranking third in 2001, according to the 2001 World Competiveness Yearbook. Their percentage of gross domestic product has moved from 1.5 to 3.0 in the last five years.
Toikka said the agreement that was signed in the afternoon was a “very generic kind of umbrella” agreement that demonstrates a willingness between the two parties to work together.
“It outlines a number of areas that we can explore together in terms of areas that could be beneficial to both parties,” Toikka said.
