Untitled - socium.ge

70 Pekka Himanen and Manuel Castellsfinancial markets to prosper. In fact, in a highly socially contradictory world,people lose their faith in the future, and this undermines positive expectationsabout the future, which is the fundamental driver of the financial markets.Thus, the state can have a positive impact on expectations in the financialmarkets through the trust it generates when most people can see themselvesincluded as beneficiaries of economic growth.Let us analyze these connections in more detail. At the center of the Finnishmodel is innovation, growing in a “field of innovation.” The key elements ofthis field are highly skilled people, finance, and the culture of innovation.The Process of InnovationTalented peopleThe Finnish Science and Technology Policy Council has always emphasizedinvestment in human talent. Here, it has represented the view of the state,industry, and the education system itself. As a result, Finnish investment inR&D rose from a low 1 percent of GDP in the early 1980s to a leading 3.6percent of GDP in 2001, which is almost double the average for the advancedeconomies (see figure 2.8).The basis of the Finnish innovation system is a public, free, and high-qualityeducation system. In the OECD PISA comparison of the performance ofstudents, Finnish students topped all of the measured topics, from literacy tomathematics and science. The proportion of “excluded” or those who performat a functionally uneducated level is the lowest in the world. In Finland, studentperformance is the least dependent on the school that the student attends.The university system is also highly inclusive. The state has invested in apublic, free, and high-quality university system, where students receive astudent grant. Since the 1960s, the university system has expanded considerablyto 56 institutions which now include 70 percent of the young generation.Financing has pushed education toward the technology fields and, as a result,27 percent of Finnish university students graduate in mathematics, science, orengineering – which is about double the average for the advanced economies.In addition, according to the OECD Science, Technology and IndustryScoreboard, there is also very close cooperation between universities and business,which share knowledge about future key areas more effectively than inthe advanced economies in general. Nokia is a case in point that illustrateshow this interaction in R&D works between universities and companies.Figure 2.10 presents the dynamics of one representative project which hasincluded funding from the state (and therefore its information is publicly available).Although Nokia’s R&D network is essentially global nowadays andincludes such nodes as Stanford University, the University of California atBerkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Tokyo,