Untitled - socium.ge

Silicon Valley and Finland 77esting, and they like to share this interesting thing with others . . . This ishow you have this fundamental Linux networking effect where you have alot of hackers working together because they enjoy what they do.” It is thesekinds of people with creative passion working together that make the innovations.EntrepreneurialismThe final key element to add to the field of innovation is entrepreneurialism:turning new ideas into practice. We can talk about business entrepreneurialism,public entrepreneurialism as well as citizen entrepreneurialism.Business entrepreneurialism is about turning ideas into business. Thismeans both within big companies and by starting up new companies. Nokia’stransformation from the early 1990s is a good example of an entrepreneurialculture within a big company. In fact, in the Finnish case, this type of entrepreneurialismhas been especially strong, as witnessed also by leading teleoperatorssuch as TeliaSonera and Elisa.However, start-up entrepreneurialism is also critical for a flourishing cultureof entrepreneurialism and this has clearly been a problem in Finland. Figure 2.7shows the low level of start-up activity in Finland; figure 2.13 shows that thereis, additionally, a low level of motivation to become an entrepreneur. A primeexample of this combination of a strong innovation culture with a low level ofentrepreneurial motivation is the story of the first graphical Web browser, whichwas developed by Helsinki University of Technology students a good whilebefore Netscape, but they were not interested in developing it into a product andstarting a business. There is also a problem with expectations: people takeUSDenmarkFinland2.50 2.75 3.00 3.25 3.50Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2001Figure 2.13 Entrepreneurial motivation (scale 1–5)