Introduction

Finland has been ranked high in various international competitiveness studies. In a less than a decade the country has become one of the leading information societies and knowledge-based economies. For a while Finland's corporate icon Nokia was Europe's most valuable company. Linux - an open source operating system with Finnish roots - was expected to challenge Windows on virtual desktops.

Over the longer run the growth performance has bee remarkable too: during the post war period GDP growth has been fastest among the European countries. Taking a longer horizon reveals that Finland is one of the few countries in the world that have been able to transform from resource-based development into a technology-driven growth.

Growth performance has been particularly good since the mid-1990s. The resurgence from the deep recession of the early 1990s is in considerable part attributable to the developments in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. How did Finland become a success story in ICT?

The idea of the study is to analyze the success factors and search for explanations for the Finnish development from various angles: economic, social, and cultural. The emphasis is, however, on the economic analysis.