To see what European business could become, look to the Nordics

Its great strength lies in fostering large-scale international corporations, like Tetra Pak (the world’s largest food-packaging company), H&M (the second largest clothing retailer in the world), industrial engineering firm Atlas Copco, Eriksson, Volvo, and that global chain of marriage graveyards, IKEA. In fact, almost half of the largest compa

You can largely forget Europe, with its socialism, red tape, and generally anti-entrepreneurial policies. The one notable exception is Sweden, which has produced recent unicorns like Spotify, King (Candy Crush), Mojang (Minecraft), Skype, and SoundCloud. Some folks argue that it’s their focus on design or decreased daylight forcing them to work har

multinationals will continue to represent much of what is best about companies: their capacity to improve productivity and therefore the living standards of ordinary people. But they will also continue to embody what is most worrying—perhaps most alienating—about companies as well.

cause for special concern is the OECD’s figure for gross domestic expenditure on research and development, which, when considered as a percentage of a country’s GDP, is a key indicator of future economic performance. Not only is Norway investing relatively little in its R&D—1.71 percent of GDP compared with 3.42 percent in Sweden—but almost hal

The most important features of those industries early on were: (1) Low cost of capital to start a business, and (2) Wide-open regulatory, technological, and physical frontiers.