Swedish Tech Start-ups Outdoing European Rivals

I just tweeted this with the #ubcvgl tag but thought it worthwhile enough that I would post about it as well.

The Globe and Mail has an article discussing how well Swedish tech start-ups (including specifically those related to gaming) are doing: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/european-business/swedish-tech-start-ups-outdoing-european-rivals/article8183599/.

The article discusses various reasons why the Swedes may be doing so well: a highly connected society, a strong heritage in design and engineering, and even long and dark winters that may boost productivity ( I don’t think Vancouver’s dark and wet winters do anything good for my productivity, but I digress). Intellectual property is not mentioned one way or the other.

One response to “Swedish Tech Start-ups Outdoing European Rivals”

  1. Jon Festinger, Q.C.

    Ip not mentioned explicitly but two of the three companies mentioned off the hop are Spotify and Mojang. Spotify comes from a real music sharing place (and got hit with a patent lawsuit as soon as its service arrived in the U.S.). Mojang is the maker of Minecraft and probably the company most responsible for honouring the creative efforts of gamers in/as the game. Notch himself as we heard from Ian Verchere in week 4 (with lots of other examples around the web) is pretty open source in his outlook. So even if a more open intellectual property outlook is not explicitly called out as the reason for success, would suggest that given the companies showcased it is implied.

    jon