New HULIQ testing

Guidlines for adding News Articles

1. Write a descriptive Headline - no more than 7 to 9 words.
2. Select the appropriate Category and optionally Tag your story.
3. Write a teaser or intro for your story. Teasers appear in category index pages and the homepage. The max length is 500 characters, or about 50 - 60 words.
4. Write your article or copy/paste into the Body Text area.
5. If you have a suitable image you may upload it using the form. Click Browse to select an image from your hard drive. The max size is 300x300 pixels. All images must be free of copyright restrictions.
6. Click Preview to check your teaser length, make any changes and click Submit. Your story will be queued for publishing.

THE CREATIVE ECONOMY IN HULIQ

Finland is a small and open economy. The borders are open for the full invasion of low-cost manufacturing from east and west, south and north, not much can come from the northern direction, due to the geographical location.

Finland is a modern country located in Northern Europe, better known as the homeland for the mobile phones giant Nokia. The population is a little over five million and two languages are spoken officially: Finnish and Swedish.

Globalization means that more and more manufacturing is outsourced. The Nokia Ecosystem is moving out of the woods and forests of Finland to China, India, Mexico, Brazil, South East Asia, and Eastern European Countries. This is no big news. But the question is about what to do next.

Manufacturing jobs are moving to low labor cost countries. Certain areas are loosing jobs. The reorganization of the manufacturing infrastructure means that people are moving away from the most sparsely populated areas towards the capital of Helsinki. The land of woods and thousand lakes is also fighting with cost pressures in the forestry industries that have been the source of green gold for the population for hundred years.

A population of five millions means a small home market. Most Small and Medium Size companies have to look for clients outside the national borders at a very early stage of their corporate development. Globalization is pushing Finnish companies into a narrow and single minded mould that produces high-tech innovators with the world as a market place.

The new source of economical development and prosperity has to be found in areas were high labor costs and the pressure of low-cost mass production can be avoided. The Finns are looking into the creative economy as a source of new ideas, opportunities and solutions. Traditional manufacturing is soon a history only. The world market is flooded by products and services. The search for the needle in the haystack has begun.

New ideas, innovations, lucrative niches’, high-value and knowledge based services are the key words for the future economy for a small and vulnerable economy. This is true for many other western “industrial nations”. The search for the new next thing is not so easy. The world and its opportunities are open to everyone. We can search and navigate for the trends.

The key to success is going to be the ability to do something unique, maybe inspired by the nature, lakes and forests. Energy has a vital importance in a country where, regardless of the global warming, temperatures can drop down to – 50 degrees Celsius in certain areas during the winter and – 20 C is a good average for several weeks.

• Sparcely Populated Innovation Centred Economy in Northern Europe
• Finland the land of Mobile Phones, Forests and Thousand Lakes