Education, money, and nice place to live?

Last summer my friends and I organized a workshop at the Industrial Design department, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, about design education. One of the topics that we discussed was what constitutes good conditions to start a business (a startup).

So Paul Graham suggested that a place that has the right humidity for starups to condense is a place where there are smart people and rich people. And of course, to make sure they want to live there, the place must be 'nice;' in other words: good food, nice weather, nice infrastructure, etc.

How about Finland, the top of the list of Richard Florida's creative index or Pier Abetti's competitive country index? It seems so promising when one measures the country's performance from the grades of students or the amount of top engineers being graduated. But from my personal experience, these numbers don't say much about innovation.

Innovation may take knowledge and skills, but it also takes ambition. Finnish university students study for free their entire life. Who cares if they take seven years to graduate. Along the way they can work in the university's research group, go and sit in the office at 10am and leave at 4pm and get a full-time salary. Maybe in class they prop up their laptop with word document opened ready for notes to be typed in, but one can hardly see it because the windows of skype (or IRC for engineering students) block it.

When you have a group meeting, they have to walk their dogs, or have 'personal commitment,' or have social plans (I call thos things parties, by the way). So here I see a lot of unmotivated individuals enjoying state benefits. Have I been so unlucky to only have met non-motivated entrepreneur?

Hopefully taking this course (Creation of Innovative SME) will allow me to meet more people with ambitions and similar kind of thinking. but hey, i have not got to the point yet!

okay, where was I? let's go back to the three conditions: smart people, rich people, and nice to live.
from my experience, education in Finland is on - if not above - par of many other leading European or north American Universities. It produces a lot of extremely smart and competitive graduates. Tick one.

Rich people? Definitely (probably Nokia executives). But spending culture here is quite different than those in the Bay Area of California. They don't invest much in new businesses. they don't take many risks. In fact, venture capital may be even too flashy for many Finns, probably for the same reason why they don't drive a Ferrari even if they can: they don't want people to think they show off. Half tick.

Nice place to live? I'm not the best person to ask, as I will become a different person you normally talk to. But if you have lived here, you will know the answer is probably no. As for me, i will just list my favourite things about Finland: summer cottages, sauna, super-duper power shower, and floor heating in bathrooms.

So why is Helsinki still on the top of the list of Richard Florida's index? Has he been here?