When it comes to a successful startup ecosystem, it’s not always California sunshine and tech cowboys. Sometimes it’s a strong social safety net and sauna culture.
In May, 32 University of Georgia Terry College of Business students traveled to Sweden, Finland and Denmark to see how a region with a radically different regulatory structure and cultural norms support a booming innovation ecosystem.
“You can’t learn about it in a classroom,” said Dylan Balon, a Terry College honors student studying finance and risk management who attended UGA’s Study of Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation Ecosystems in May. “You can’t meet the actual players and talk to people in the ecosystem. Being there allowed us to get the local perspective.”
UGA Entrepreneurship Program Associate Director Don Chambers has led an ecosystem of innovation study away trips to Tel Aviv and Austin. This year’s course focused on sustainability and technology startups.
While each location is unique in culture and what motivates entrepreneurs, Chambers wants students to understand the four key factors that must come together to support an innovative network — industry clusters, access to capital, university research and government support.
In addition to case studies and mock consulting projects, students visited institutions such as Aalto University, the Stockholm School of Economics, trucking giant Scania, a consulting and venture capital company The Footprint Firm, and tech incubators such as the Digital Hub Denmark and Bloxhub.
For Balon, who has been on business study abroad trips at Terry, one of the standout aspects of innovation and business in Sweden, Finland and Denmark was the emphasis on sustainability — no matter what startup they visited.
“At pretty much every business we went to, they talk about the triple bottom line — people, planet, and profit,” Bacon said. “In the U.S., we consider the triple bottom line, but the regular bottom line is the true priority.”
The other cultural difference students noticed was the impact of the Northern European social safety net on entrepreneurs’ motivations.
“We’re accustomed to American capitalism,” Chambers said. “And you have much more social safety net in these Northern European countries. It’s a two-sided coin. The students see how that safety net encourages more risk-taking because they have a safe social safety net, but it also discourages risk-taking because you can’t amass a ton of money because it’s a highly taxed area.”
But for all the differences between innovation ecosystems in the states and Northern Europe, one of the key takeaways was universal, Balon said.
“I think I knew this, but I didn’t understand the extent of it — for an entrepreneur to thrive, you need a lot of collaboration,” Balon said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be an entrepreneur, but I think it’s true in any career. The entire ecosystem around you matters, and you have to know how to collaborate with people and with other institutions.”