Now that we are re bouncing from the shock of the financial crisis in Iceland, it’s time to focus on what’s next. First of all, it’s important to realize where Iceland is standing.
Last year, Iceland was #1 on UN’s list over best life quality in the world. The education level is high, 100% of all electricity and heating comes from renewable energy, Icelanders have the longest life expectancy and one of the lowest rates of infant deaths rate. GNP has been one of the highest in the world and Iceland has in only few years become one of the richest countries in the world.
Even though the banking industry has now collapsed, we still have a very dynamic business environment with very talented young people, loads of energy, and great flexibility. Though we will be facing difficult times in the next years, I think we can afford it and that we will be very fast in rebuilding the Icelandic economy and creating an even stronger (not bigger, stronger) economy than we had before.
The Icelandic nation is a tough nation that has faced great difficulties through the years, facing the often merciless Atlantic ocean to make a living, surviving natural disasters, earthquakes, avalanches, volcanic eruptions, fierce winter storms etc. We are used to face hard times, fight them and survive. And when it comes to economic disasters like last week, we have great resources and the right spirit to rebuild ourselves. This will not break us, it will make us stronger.
WE'LL BE BACK!
Innovation is key at times like this and one of the things we need to be very aware of is that we will not be sacrificing our resources of nature and image for short term growth. Our image has been damaged enough, let’s not ruin the rest. We need to focus on building up industries that really give a good ROI, based on our greatest and most valuable resource, our creativity.
The fastest growing industries in the last years, excluding the finance industry, have been arts (Björk, Sigurrós, Arnaldur Indridason), entertainment (Lazy Town, film production, TV-commercials, computer games), software (TM, Kogun, RM Studio), high-tech (Gavia, Marel), bio-technology and medicine (deCode, Ossur, Actavis), extreme sports (Arctic Trucks, 66°N, Cintamani, Nikita) as well as our clean natural products (fish, Lysi, lamb, Skyr) and energy (Iceland New Energy, GGE, Reykjavik Energy). Not to mention the travel industry that is blooming – and just became more competitive because of the lower value of the currency :)
I think it is important to focus on the most valuable assets we have. Our creativity and human resources. Even though the banking system failed and 90% of the stock market vanished in just few days, we are still just as rich of creativity, energy, drive, intelligence and human resources – and even richer from experience. When you look at the richest countries in the world, they have become rich on their intelligence, not their natural resources. If natural resources were the foundation of wealth, Congo would be the richest country in the world. And they are far from it. Very far.
All of a sudden there’s a lot of talented people available. We need to create channels for those great minds to create something new, something that will grow and prosper. Now is the perfect time for innovation and startups. It will be exciting to see what Iceland will be bringin in couple of years as a result.
We’ve lost fishing boats at sea before. When that happened it left us with two choices. To stop rowing – and starve, or to improve our boats and weather forecasts and keep on fishing. This is no different. We’ll be back!
Hjörtur
Image: courtesy of Gísli Dua Hjörleifsson, aka Villimaður (check out his gallery, it's fantastic)
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