The CITIE Nordic Report is the second in the CITIE series, which looks at how cities around the world are supporting innovation and entrepreneurship. This report was produced by Nesta and Accenture, sponsored by Index Ventures.

Key Findings

• Copenhagen, Helsinki, Stockholm and Oslo all show a consistent level of high performance in developing their innovation policy environment
• The Nordic region’s capital cities are out-pacing their European neighbours in technology policy leadership, and out-performing North American cities across many key policy roles
• The overall region is one of the strongest assessed by CITIE to date

The report finds that Copenhagen, Helsinki, Stockholm and Oslo show “a consistently strong level of high performance” in developing and implementing the policies required to underpin a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. They are out-pacing their European neighbours in policy leadership by a significant margin, and also out-performing North American cities across many key policy roles.

Our analysis of the Nordic capital cities against the CITIE framework shows a consistently strong level of high performance, and demonstrates that smaller-scale cities are just as capable as larger cities of developing the policy and ecosystems to support innovation and a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. Despite smaller and less dense city populations, the quality of relationships can be just as important in enabling a strong policy environment for innovation and entrepreneurship.

CITIE has identified three areas that the region can focus on to get started:

• Advocate the ambition and successes of local start-up and let the world know how good the Nordics cities are. Support local start-ups and entrepreneurs on the global stage to access international opportunities
• Civic innovation can emerge from multiple places. The Nordic cities can work across geographic boundaries to build regional, European and international policy initiatives
• Find a way to experiment with new business models that may be disruptive, but could enable new economic growth. This can begin with a series of “no regrets” steps such as social listening, participation in hackathons, running open innovation challenges; all of which will help show the city government how it can support emerging innovation

Author

David Altabev