Happiest country Finland also ranks high in digital competitiveness

They say you can’t buy happiness but how about world-leading digital services? Come to Finland. There’s a lot here to make you smile.

You might have heard that Finland topped the 2018 UN Global Happiness Report this year as the happiest place on the planet. But did you know that Finland is also ranked high in digital competitiveness? Actually, we have the strongest digital knowledge capital in Europe and a workforce with the highest proportion of ICT specialists in the world. On top of that, Finnish companies are number one in the use of cloud services. In the European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index, Finland was this year’s top scorer in digital public services, ranking digital skills as our strongest competitive advantage, compared with other EU member states.

If you come to Finland, you’ll find we have all the digital brainpower you need to turn your digital visions into reality. The country is full of small- and medium-sized companies and start-ups, creating many of the top innovations in their field. In the global 2018 Bloomberg Innovation Index, we were ranked in the top five for the world’s most innovative economies. And where does this innovation come from? To my mind it comes from dealing with challenges.

Nation of problem-solvers

In Finland we see confronting challenges as the fuel for our creativity. At my company, Cloudia, our customers are dealing with manifold challenges: the pace of technological advancement, information overload, bad experiences in digitalization, uncertainty in supply, globalization, mounting pressure to increase revenue and cut costs, and fear of change. The list is long but then again, business is all about solving challenges better than the competition. And apparently it comes naturally to us Finns; according to the latest data released from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, Finnish school children are among the best in the world in group problem-solving. Which reminds me, if you come to Finland, you’ll have no trouble communicating; ‘Hi-tech’ is our third native language – not to mention coming fifth in the English Profiency Index.

 Humble number one

However, we all know that decisions about new business partnerships are not made based on top rankings or statistics. They’re made based on people.  After all this bragging, you won’t believe me if I tell you we Finns are known the world over as the most humble people. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We also hold the world ranking for drinking the most coffee per person. I’m not sure what that means. But there’s always a freshly brewed pot on the table.

So welcome to Finland – the happiness and the coffee are on us!

 “We all know that decisions about new business partnerships are not made based on top rankings or statistics. They’re made based on people.”

Are Saarinen

CEO, Cloudia

PS: Do you have a digital challenge? Let us know and we’ll try and solve it. At Cloudia, our particular expertise has developed into transforming client businesses through digitalizing procurement or contract management processes. For more take a look at how Cloudia has pioneered procurement digitalization throughout Europe.