Against all odds – Day 111/139

Petteri Kilpinen published today a blog entry about Finland and our innovation strategy. His topic is quite ambitious since it bets that the next Facebook will come from Finland.

From Finland? Why?

Kilpinen uses Muxlim as an example of a movement-driven as opposed to a technology-driven innovation. Although Muxlim doesn’t even target the Finnish audience, we can safely say that the Finnish engineering skills have partially contributed to its success. But could it be Muxlim’s asset that it has basically nothing to offer for the Finns?

Aren’t Finns nationalistic enough to just create a movement?

Finns have an enormous potential to create remarkable things if they see the purpose (remember finnfags on Drawball?) But Finns have the national vice of jealousy. Finns don’t do squat especially if there is another Finn harvesting the benefits.

Here’s the way Finland will make the next Facebook.

Tekes has an annual budget of 500 million euros. This money is not spent on doing. If Finland wants to create the next Facebook, it requires a whole lot of doing instead of researching and developing.

I will propose founding a new institute called Ilmes (Ilmiöiden luomiskeskus). It could modestly start with, let’s say 1 % of Tekes budget. Ilmes will use the 5,000,000 euros to machinate a few global Internet phenomena per year. It will pay fellow Finns to do something remarkable in the Internet. It will pay for hits on Finnish websites through creative campaigns. It will pay good affiliate bonuses for bringing new users to the Finnish social media websites.

If there is one country in the world to do something like this, it must be Finland.