Connecting People

Finland was among the most aggressive and successful countries in the world in converting traditional industrial policies into new innovation policies. This chapter identifies the specific ways in which policymakers leveraged tight-knit networks to fundamentally restructure Finnish economic institutions. Together with entrepreneurial private sector actors, namely Nokia, they transformed Finland from one of the lowest technology economies in the OECD into one of the most research-intensive societies in the world. At the same time, the chapter reveals that Finland relied so heavily on technological innovation that it increased its vulnerability to adverse economic shocks, most notably the invention of the iPhone.