SIEPR Policy
paper No. 00-46
Clusters, Competition, and “Global Players” in ICT Markets: The Case of Scandinavia
John E. Richards
July 2001
This paper examines the emergence of Scandinavia as a global center for wireless
telecommunications. As in other papers in this volume, the paper suggests that access to
large and growing demand pools, focusing on ICT segments that lack strong incumbents,
the presence of English-speaking technical talent, and the advantages of being “out of
town” were critical drivers of Scandinavia’s success. At the same time, Scandinavia
suggests the importance of public policy, firm-building and firm strategy, and the role of
being not only “out of town” but also from a “small town” in the emergence of ICT
clusters. However, Scandinavia is different from other clusters in that it reflects the
success of a very small number of large global firms rather than the widely distributed
entrepreneurial growth witnessed in Silicon Valley. In short, the success of Scandinavia
is primarily a story of the success of Nokia and Ericsson. Scandinavia is also interesting
because, once established, leading firms in the cluster have explicitly attempted to
harness success in hardware parts of the value chain to establish leadership in emergent
wireless software and services markets.
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