Stockholm and Helsinki have been ranked among Europe's Hottest Startup Capitals by Wired UK. Wired refers to Sweden as "the most digitally connected nation in the world" and lists Skype, Spotify and MySQL as pioneering ventures that are now global.
Helsinki is thriving from startups emerging in the shadow of Nokia and the death of Symbian which has generated a lot of highly skilled engineers to Finland. The mobilegame Angry Birds and webgame Applifier are mentioned as Finnish success innovations.

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Lundbeck, Inc. the maker of Nembutal, one of the drugs Florida will use to execute death row inmate Manuel Valle with, has asked Gov. Rick Scott to not use their drug to kill people, the drug has obviously not been tested or approved for killing people. The letter was sent on June 8 and it is not known if Scott has replied to the letter. The drug has been used in other states' executions and Lundbeck has protested and tried to stop the distribution of the drug to prisons in the US that intend to use the it for execution. In the letter below Lundbeck mentions that they cannot control how licensed healthcare professionals use Nembutal or any other pharmaceutical product in the USA. It would be interesting to see how the business friendly Scott replies to the request from Lundbeck.

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A report published by the Partnership for a New American Economy claim that more than 40 percent or 200 of the Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Eighteen percent of the 500 companies were founded by immigrants and another 22 percent by children of immigrants, according to the report the foreign-born population of the US has averaged 10.5 percent since 1850, in other words, immigrant entrepreneurs are overrepresented as founders of Fortune 500 companies. Companies such as Apple, Google, AT&T, Colgate, eBay, Ford, General Electric, Heinz, IBM and Kraft, McDonalds are examples of well known brands founded by immigrants or their children. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple is the son of immigrant parents from Syria, Walt Disney was the son of a Canadian immigrant, as well as the founders of Oracle (Russia and Iran), IBM (Germany), Clorox (Ireland), Boeing (Germany), 3M (Canada) and Home Depot (Russia).

As a Swede used to be confused with being from Switzerland I was very disappointed to find an error in the report though, it claims that the Fortune 500 company Flour was founded by Swedes, wrong, wrong, it was founded by a Swiss family.  When will people learn......

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I found this guide on clayboy.co.uk it is well worth reading for those of us trying to figure out the English language.

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The Global Competetiveness Report published by World Economic Forum  claims that Sweden is the world's second most competetive country with transparent institutions, efficient financial markets and the world's strongest technological adoption. Sweden benfitis especially from transparent and efficient public institutions, very low corruption and a government that is considered to be one of the most efficient in the world. Switzerland is ranked number one, the US came in on the fourth place. Other Scandinavian countries ranked high as well, Finland was placed number 7, Denmark 9 and Norway 14.

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The Swedish video messaging services, VMS, company  Ironroad that has developed a technology for sharing instant video messages via smartphones  is currently negotating with Charlie Sheen on having him using their services. Charlie Sheen who has realised the power of networked media has more than 3,5 million followers on Twitter. According to a source cited in an Expressen article, Charlie Sheen is considered quite a catch and "everyone wants him"

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One of our BlackBerry applications was selected to be one of the most brilliant apps available on the market. We are so proud to be recommended alongside with giants such as Bank of America, Reuters, Paypal and CNN Money in the recently published book "Brillíant BlackBerry Apps for Dummies". I think we are the only Scandinavian company to make it. It feels good to brag about it, in Sweden we wouldn't have as we have Jantelagen  there.

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Photo from giraff.org

The founders of the robotics company Giraff Technologies decided to leave Silicon Valley and the US to further develop and market their products in Västerås, Sweden. In  2009 the company joined the  Robotdalen as the first foreign business to take advantage of the Robotdalen project. Since then 25 Giraff robots have been sold to 6 European countries and in 2010 Giraff was chosen for the EXCITE project, where researchers from Örebro University study how the elderly interact with Information Communications Technology, ICT, and in 2011 Giraff was listed by the Swedish Institute as one of the 20 most interesting innovations in 2010.

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The Scandinavian, online community Stardoll has more than 90 million users that create fashion online. Stardoll was born in Finland, 2004 when Liisa Wang created a site for paperdolls, Paperdoll Heaven that was later purchased by a Swedish team that developed it into Stardoll, today Stardoll has offices in London and San Fransisco. The concept is based on Liisa Wangs idea to allow users to style and dress celebrities online.  
Check it out here http://www.stardoll.com

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Several iPhones have exploded in Sweden during the winter and Apple is not replacing them. According to Apple iPhones should only be used in temperatures between 32 and 95 degrees Farenheit ( 0 - 35 C ).  I guess the Swedes back home will have to get a BlackBerry for the winter around the time they change to winter tires and in the spring when summer tires are back on the cars they can play with their precious and delicate iPhones.

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Stockholm Premium Lager Beer was introduced to the USA in 2010, as the first Swedish Beer available on the US market for more than 10 years.  Three Swedish entrepreneurs from Florida, convinced the Swedish brewery Krönleins, founded in 1836, to export their gold medal winning brew, Stockholm Premium Lager to the USA and Florida.

Within less than a year the distribution of the beer has expanded to Alabama and Georgia.

All Swedish beer lovers, including myself should be grateful to Ulf Sandström and his two sons Mikael and Fredrik who convinced the renowned Swedish brewery to export their beer,  that the US beer afficiniados call Euro Pale Lager to Florida and take up the tough competition with other European megabrands such as Heineken and Stella Artois and the fact that the US today have more beer types per capita than Germany.

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Outsourcing is a race to the bottom. The US will assume the same living standards as countries we outsource to, rather than them raising to our level.
One of the largest accounting firms in the USA, with IT headquarters in Tampa,  has outsourced thousands of jobs to India and south America for the last few years. Yesterday another 500 employees got the dreaded phone call that they had been fired. Many of them will have to spend their last months training their outsourced replacement before having to pack their skills and go. Needless to say it will be difficult for the latest victims of outsourcing to find a new job in this economy. A new report released by InformationWeek draws the conclusion that one of the top three reasons to why the US will loose its position as global IT innovation leader.  
Share how outsourcing have affected your life on http://www.igotoutsourced.com

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The Swedish Company PRQ, www.prq.se, owned by amongst others Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij from Pirate Bay is hosting the web site Wiki Leaks that published the video of American military shooting civilans and a Reuter journalist and his driver in the Iraqi suburb New Baghdad in 2007. The video contains amongst other the US armys recordings of the communications amongst the soldiers in the helicopter that shot and killad a group of civilians and injured two children. In the recordings one of the soldiers in the helicopter is laughing when an injured man who is trying to crawl away from the scene is run over by a US tank. Click here to watch the video http://www.wikileaks.org/.

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Norwegian brothers, Ivar the president of SBTA and Ivar the Nobel Prize winner.

During the first power luncheon of 2010, SBTA elected a new board and declared that they will launch a new web site within a week.  I am looking forward to an updated and fresh look together with added functionality of the SBTA web. The 1973 Nobel Prize winner in physics, Ivar Giaever made a highly appreciated presentation of his way to the Nobel Prize.  

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Florida Technology Journal is hosting a mingle event at One Urban Center in Tampa. Sounds like a lot of fun to get to know other techies around Tampa Bay.
I will be there for sure.  

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First power lunch and annual meeting of SBTA will take place Friday January 29th at 11.45 am. The price for the lunch is $20.
Place: Landry's Seafood House, 7116 W Courtney Campbell Cswy, Tampa, FL 33607
Send reservations and questions  about the 2010 membership to info@scandbalt,org

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GM is trying to get the most out of their sale of SAAB by using media for a public auction of the brand. One day the Swedish part of the company will be liquidated and the other day Spyker are ready to buy. Customary for American companies the bottom line counts and employees and other small businesses affected by their descison does not matter. They ignore the stressed out employees in Sweden that are being torn apart from not knowing from day to day if they will have a job with SAAB in the nearest future. Media is happy to participate in playing these games and help GM to up the bids for SAAB, this is about the bottom line for the media as well, they make money from news. Even if SAAB gets a new owner I doubt they will take over the 2000 employees in Sweden, a new owner will slim and trim the company in order to make it profitable.

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Read more about the SBTAs fall program. The SBTA luncheons is a popular meeting place for the Scandinavian movers and shakers of Tampa Bay.
                                                                   

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