Nordic collaboration moves from speeches to action
Photo 1 of 3. Idar Kreutzer speaking to the room at The Nordic Summit in Tromsø
At The Nordic Summit in Tromsø, Idar Kreutzer, Special Advisor at NHO, argued that the Nordics have a unique chance to lead European change, but only if competitors, businesses and institutions work together.
On day one of The Summit, Idar Kreutzer took a look at the world Nordic merchants operate in. The rules of global business are changing, he said, and technology and data have become a key source of power.
The Nordics start from a strong position. According to the recent “Nordic Draghi report”, the region is the most productive in Europe, but productivity growth has been about half of that in the US over the last 20 years. Nordic companies also struggle to scale, and too little capital goes into risk capital.
Trust as a real concept
The Nordic advantage, Kreutzer argued, is trust. Around seven in ten people in the Nordics say most people can be trusted.
«Trust is not an abstract concept. It is the basis for collaboration between business, finance and the public sector, and between competitors», he said.
Kreutzer described Nordic Initiative as “an excellent example of Nordic collaboration being concrete, ambitious, and working across actors”, and pointed to Nordic Compass as another.
For Kreutzer, the conclusion is a “Nordics first” approach. The challenges are not unique to the Nordics, but the region has a unique position to make real progress.
«Why not let the Nordics go first and grab the benefits?» he asked, adding that doing so would also strengthen Europe and the competitiveness of all its companies.
He closed by pointing to the Nordic strengths in industrial AI: 27 million people, some of the most digitised economies in the world, and an economy built on trust.
