Innovative Finland and 21st Century Education

Much like the political concept of "coattails," companies look at increase the perceived value of their brand, by associating with bigger, more prestigious brands.

So, if I tell you I have a partnership with Nike, that's more impressive than Joe's Auto Shop (sorry, Joe).

That's why I am feeling good that my kids and I are so closely associated with Finland (and Estonia).  ;-)

Finland has long been recognized for its world-class and world-leading education system and now, they are taking the next step to get their students ready for a globalized world...by abolishing classes based on a specific subject.

You can read more here.

This goes hand-in-hand with my long-standing concern about the American education system (college and K-12), so it is good to see the leader doing something innovative.

That...combined with their emoji-driven marketing campaign (I downloaded the app- Apple + Android)....Go Suomi!

Kuwaiti-Finnish Orthodox Jewish Wedding in Israel

One of the more remarkable stories I heard on our recent trip to Israel was of an Orthodox Jew who was born a Muslim in Kuwait and married a Finnish woman whose father was a Lutheran minister.

It sounds like a joke, but it's not.

My pal, Gil, wrote the story for the Jerusalem Post. Re-printed below with his permission.

And, obviously, given our family's unique relationship with Finland, this was icing on the cake ;-)

Wedding season underway as Kuwait- and Finland-born Jews tie the knot

 

by Gil Zohar

With Tisha b’Av over, the summer’s wedding season began this week. And one of the most festive weddings this writer has ever attended was the nuptials of Kuwait-born Mark (Mordechai) Halawa and Finland-born Linda Brunell that took place Wednesday at Nes Harim in the Judean Hills.

 

Officiating was Rabbi Israel Weisel of Bnai Brak. Among the hundreds of guests were streimel-wearing Belzer Hassidim, sun-burned Swedish Lutherans who had flown in from Scandinavia in a demonstration of Zionist support and family ties, and friends from Abu Dhabi.

 

Halawa, in his mid-30s, spoke about the divinely-ordained path that brought him back to Judaism.

 

His grandmother, Ruwaida née Mizrachi, was born in Jerusalem during the British Mandate of Palestine. She married Muhammad al-Masri. a Jordanian soldier from Nablus, and the couple ended up stationed at Zarqa, Jordan. Following the 1970 Black September uprising, al-Masri – who was a high-ranking officer in Jordan’s Arab Legion - was cashiered when King Hussein purged his army of Palestinians. The family relocated to Kuwait.

 

Thus Halawa’s mother, whose name Mark prefers not to cite, moved as a teenager to Kuwait. There she met and married her husband, whose name Halawa similarly declines to mention. Opening an engineering and contracting business, the family grew wealthy on government contracts from Kuwait’s ruling as-Sabah clan. But the good times came crashing down in 1990 when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein occupied the tiny Gulf emirate,

 

Halawa’s family, which was on vacation in Spain when the invasion of Kuwait took place, became exiles. They ended up in London, Canada, where Mark studied psychology and business at the University of Western Ontario. There in a fateful meeting at the school’s library he fell into a conversation with a long-bearded professor of philosophy named Yitzchok Block. After considerable probing, the Chabad rabbi pronounced Halawa halachically Jewish by virtue of his being the descendant of a Jewish woman. Halawa protested that his is a Muslim.

 

But the truth won out. After much soul-searching, including years at Jerusalem’s Aish ha-Torah Yeshiva, he returned to the fold of Jewish life.

 

Linda Brunell’s family story is equally extraordinary. Her father Ole Brunell was born in a Swedish-speaking village on the west coast of Finland. Growing up in an insular community, he attended seminary and university in Turku, Finland, and was ordained as a Lutheran minister. After leading several congregations across Finland, he and his family relocated to sunny Australia to minister to a Finnish-speaking church in Brisbane,

 

But Brunell and his wife Runa began to question the theological underpinnings of Christianity. Finally in 1991 he renounced Christianity and left his job as a minister, along with its car, vicarage and status. After a long and difficult path, the family converted to Judaism and made aliya in 1996. Ole and Runa became Shlomo and Ruth. All four of the Brunell daughters have married Israelis.

 

Linda Brunell works as a patent paralegal with a major Tel Aviv law firm. Mark Halawa is a businessman with extensive contacts and dealings across the Middle East. He also is a speaker on the Chabad circuit in North America and Europe.

 

“This is the happiest day of my whole life,” Brunell said. “Mark and I share the same goals, despite our different backgrounds, of building a family in Israel. I’m very grateful to my parents for bring my sisters and I on this path. And I’m sure they’re happy to have their last daughter married off.”

 

“Many people asked Linda and me, ‘Where are you going to get married?’ Is there a better place than the land of my ancestors? I’m only sorry that my immediate family isn’t here, but I’ve gained a whole new family – the whole Jewish people is now my family,” said Halawa. “My dream of marrying a Jew and establishing a Jewish home has become a reality. Baruch ha-Shem.”

Gil Zohar is a Jerusalem-based journalist and tour guide and can be reached at gilzohar@rogers.com

Team Finland sees Team Finland and learns Finnish

My kids' nicknames (one set at least) are Tikkanen, Jokinen, and Lakkanen. Collectively, they are known as "Team Finland" (how that happened).

We've had a field trip to the Finnish Embassy   and Lakkanen did her "country report" for school on Finland, complete with a picture of her with the President of Finland.

So, when we found out that Team Finland was

going to play Team USA at the Verizon Center as part of the warm-up for the World Cup of Hockey. We naturally had to go, provided they would wear their Team Finland hockey jerseys.

Which they did.

We figured we'd be happy no matter who won ;-)

As we walked around the arena, however, one thing happened that I didn't anticipate.

The crowd was 99% USA, of course, so whenever we saw someone else with a Finland jersey, that person would wave or nod at us. And, in some cases, they would say something to my kids...in Finnish.

Which they don't really speak.

They do know, however, that the way Finns refer to Finland is "Suomi," so when Jokinen heard someone say "_____ Suomi!" he turned to me and said, "I think that probably means "Go Finland!", I was particularly proud of him.

Unfortunately, Team Finland lost 3-2, but my Team Finland won.

Saunas and Travel Experiences

I am a big fan of saunas. I like the intensity of the heat (I prefer dry).

I also like how, by virtue of the fact that you are naked and you’re sweating like crazy, that people are able to talk more freely.

I’ve found that some countries do saunas really well. Some don’t. Finland, Russia, Germany, and Estonia are great at it.

The Finns, by many accounts, are jedi masters of the sauna and, for many years, it was in saunas (co-ed, btw) that many business deals were transacted.

As my friend, Heikki said, “in the sauna, you can’t hide…that’s how you build trust.”

My hotel in Tallinn had a great one and over the course of 3 nights, I was able to meet some Finns, a Latvian, and a Lithuanian.

While their English wasn’t always great (better than my Finnish, Latvian, and Lithuanian though), I asked a few questions and then just listened. 

It is through the people that I most enjoy traveling.  Seeing the sights is nice, but you can do that with Virtual Reality glasses.

Listening to people and ENJOYING listening to people who are outside of your normal course of action.  That’s what makes travel special.

In close spaces at 205 degrees Fahrenheit, you really can concentrate on the words and emotions of the other person.

And a bonus…those who come from strong sauna cultures know sauna etiquette…the primary of which is…when you come into the sauna, you immediately close the door! Don’t stand there like an idiot with the door open. It’s chemistry, the heat goes right out.

The Estonian E-Miracle, Day 2

We headed into Day 2 of the journey through e-Estonia with our heads still reeling at the extent of the innovation and the possibilities.

Selling the Estonian E-Miracle

So, it was perfect that we had a chance to sit down with Indrek Pällo, the Director of Estonian Investment Agency at Enterprise Estonia, and the guy charged with actually taking this “product” and selling all of this globally.

He’s tasked with attracting jobs, direct investment, helping to create export markets, and increasing e-residency.  Like almost any marketer, he faces the challenges of Awareness and Perception.

On the pro side, what Indrek has going for him is a country where doing business is easy, the IT education and training is very strong, English is essentially a 2^nd language, taxes are low, and work ethic is high.

Estonia ranks 13^th among economic freedom, has top credit ratings from the various agencies (we’ll leave out “The Big Short” wisecracks here), 80% internet usage and a per capita GDP of 13, 210 Euros.

They have more startups per capita than any country in Europe and are #2 in the world behind Israel, so innovation is deep in the DNA.

On the con side, what Indrek has going against him is a location challenge (not super central) that is exacerbated by its neighborhood (read: Russia) and a small market/employee base.

And bigger than all that, is an awareness problem globally that Estonia is truly the “real deal” or perhaps, better said, that Estonia is even out there as an option.

Still, all that notwithstanding, Estonia has managed to become a regional center of excellence for offshore work for Swedish, Finnish, and Danish companies. They have no desire to become a low-cost center like India, for example. Not only because of the economics, but because of the scale. 

For example, if a huge company shows up in Estonia and says, “ok, we need to hire 2,000 people,” that’s not necessarily a good thing…initially.  They just don’t have the (talented) bodies. So they either need to attract them (see www.workinestonia.com) or grow them…which takes time, the technical universities of Tallinn and Tartu are leaders in that respect.

Indrek’s team is more likely to say, “let’s start with 40 or so and see if it makes sense.” They are looking for highly-skilled jobs in InfoTech and mechanical engineering, not vast numbers.

 It’s a different mindset.  Think Navy Seals versus a battalion.

When companies think “regional hubs” or “easy to do business,” they might think Singapore, London, Berlin, Dubai. 

With 15 salespeople (essentially) worldwide, Indrek’s job is to change that and he and the team are on their way.

They were responsible for generating over 20% of the total foreign investment in Estonia in 2015.

Still his job won’t be done until Estonia is listed as #1 in “Top Global Places to Do High Value Knowledge Work” (not sure that’s a real index, but you get the gist).

The “Estonian E-Miracle” story needs to be known by far more business leaders than it is right now.

X-Road at the X-Road of the Estonian E-Miracle

We then had a chance to go deep into the heart of what makes the Estonian E-Miracle work. That would be the X-Road system.  Developed at a cost of 50 million euros (compared to the 2 billion that Finland has spent and the 20 billion that the UK has spent—and which aren’t done), it is the core plumbing, if you will, that connects all of the government services with each other in a secure way.

Built by a company called Cybernetica, and led by CEO Oliver Väärtnõu, it “create[s] a secure and standardized environment for interconnection or enabling data exchange between a multitude of different information systems.”

Simply put…it makes Estonia work as smoothly as Estonia works.

The technology is peer-to-peer, which means that there is no central server or data center that is vulnerable to attack.  It works over the public internet, so there’s no private network that needs to be maintained. It is decentralized. 

As Oliver says, “X-road was build to support the democratic process.”

With X-road (or as Cybernetica now sells it to other countries the Unified eXchange Platform), countries (or cities/municipalities) have the ability, as Oliver says, to “create government e-services…or just leave it in the corner or use it as a hammer. Whatever they want.”  But they have the technology to make government really work well and serve as an enabler.

That’s a ridiculously powerful concept and so foreign to most of the world…but it’s the essence of modern Estonia.

And now, Cybernetica is bringing it to the rest of the world, along with their other cutting-edge solutions in border surveillance (they help protect Estonia’s eastern front), maritime radio communications, and visual aids to navigation.

These guys are HARD CORE.  Of their nearly 120 employees, over 80 are involved in R&D and Oliver says that “this is the lifeblood” of the company.

In fact, 20% of the employee base is in a separate business unit that is a non-profit R&D function. That’s how committed they are.

It has been since Soviet times, actually. The institute was founded in the 1960s to do basic research and was actually responsible for many contributions to Soviet technological development.

Through a unique partnerhip with the government after independence in 1991, they were able to continue and then, in 2000, management bought the company from the government.

As we spoke w/Oliver, I felt like we were at the absolute epi-center/ground zero, if you will, of the e-revolution that should impact government entities around the world. (Bonus points if you can zoom in on this picture and figure out what is printed on their walls).

Exploring FinTech

We also dove deeper into the Estonian start-up entrepreneurial scene, having two meetings with FinTechs startups Funderbeam and Fundwise. [FinTech is shorthand for Finance Technology]. These are companies that are either seeking to seriously disrupt the way that banks and financial institutions do their business or significantly improve it.

Mads, the CMO of Funderbeam, is a man possessed by a passionate vision…namely, start-up investing shouldn’t be limited to the rich and connected. It should be democratized and available to anyone who wants to put in a few hundred or thousand dollars. Joined at the end of our meeting by Bjorn, a native Minnesotan, successful Jobbatical placement, and Sprinklr fan who saw my Swarm check-in, I couldn’t help but think that we were getting a sneak peek into the future of a part of finance.

Instead of a few, well-placed and well-connected investors putting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars using a heavily paper-based process, Funderbeam sees a world of Kickstarter-like projects, but instead of an item or experience, you get shares (sort of) in the company. 

Led by syndicates, you can find a company that looks promising, put your money in (I’m leaving out some details), but you get a “token” that is cryptographically secure and backed on the blockchain, representing your interest.  And the best part?  These tokens can be traded freely. So, unlike most early-stage investments, you don’t have to wait for an exit or spend a lot of time looking for a buyer of your portion of the company.  You float the “tokens” and sell them on an exchange.

Think Nasdaq for any private company.  Not so surprising since their CEO, Kaidi Ruusalep, is a former Nasdaq Tallinn official.

My only issue with Funderbeam? As an US citizen, I can’t participate in it…yet. SEC/IRS laws make it really difficult. Aaargh!

Attacking the challenge, albeit from a slightly different angle is Fundwise. The CEO, Henri is working with the Estonian business registry to simplify the process of crowdfunding private companies. There’s a pretty nice video on their website.

These two teams were a microcosm of the entrepreneurial energy that is sweeping the country.

Is everything perfect?

Of course not.

I failed miserably in my effort to set up a bank account. My mistake was in not registering a business first. Fortunately, the law has changed that in-person visits to the bank will no longer be mandatory and later this year, I should be able to fix that via Skype.

Still…what you have here is a country that is “digital by default,” is committed to innovation, has a need for innovation for both economic and security reasons, and has created, and this is perhaps the most important thing…a culture of innovation.

Overall, we had 9 meetings in the course of two days. It was pretty action packed, but as my friend Jacob said before I left, “there’s value in immersion.” 

And indeed there is.

If you are fascinated by innovation, technology, geo-politics, or having it stay light until 10pm in the summertime….Visit Estonia.

Notes: Click here to see the entire e-Estonia itinerary.