More of these, please!

5.12.2017

Completely satisfied with my holiday week on Madeira I bench myself in Finnair's Airbus. Thoughts are popping up about the three day working week ahead. Finland’s 100 year anniversary on Wednesday makes the come back to working life smooth, luckily enough. I also notice the Finnair’s customer magazine Blue Wings Jubilee Edition in the seat folder in front of me, grab it and start to glimpse the content.

The articles are surprisingly interesting from a business advisor’s point of view. In an specific Advertisement Section some companies make short briefings about themselves. Companies, some of which I’m not familiar with. Ever heard about Dovre Group, Dinolift or Siggpack? New acquaintances for me anyway. Dovre specialises in advisory services and resource solutions and IT services related to project governance and project management. With Net Sales of 84 million € (98 % comes outside Finland) and 500 projects professionals Dovre is quite a story. And their projects are no easy going ones; large renewable energy project in Canada, off shore iil projects in the Pacific Russia an so forth.

Heard about Dinolift then? Dinolift is a company manufacturing mobile work platforms, with over 33 million € in Net sales, 85 %of which is going on export mainly to Countries in Northern Europe. Dovre and Dinolift are of course no supersize companies but excellent examples what you can accomplish specializing and finding niches. A totally different story is the one of Siggpack. Concentrating totally on the Finnish marked by growing greenhouse cucumbers – lots of them. 150 employees generating Net Sales of some 25 -30 million €. And managing almost 10 hectares of greenhouses.

Let´s be happy that we have these success stories. Achieved regardless common complaints of challenging entrepreneurial conditions in our country. The point is, how could our entrepreneurial policy and recruiting programmes screen the entrepreneurial talents, bring in needed finance so our nation could generate an other hundred of similar companies. A good mix of exporting and domestically operating companies . And produce 30-50.000 new working opportunities within a reasonable time frame.

Let´s hope that our politicians, in stead of building unnecessary new bureaucratic levels, start pondering these strategical questions of life and death regarding our social welfare nation. If not, we fail and will have this “army” of unemployed for ever.

At least the healthiest third of those unemployed are or almost are fit for fight – the resting two thirds needing support (a remarkable part is unfortunately a lost case) to be capable of entering the open work market. And who shall finance that? Tax payers of course. But also the companies itself, those companies with fit products and services and equipped with a solid competitive edge enabling them to operate on the open market. And the major part also operating in the export markets.

Entering its second century of independancy our great welfare state is dependant on this – it is as simple as that.

Herbie