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I’m writing this from Stratford, Ontario in Canada. I’ve had a very exciting few days’ visit here, despite being extremely exhausting and demanding. Haven’t had too much free time – round the clock days networking and meeting new people as well as pitching the Finnish way of doing things. However, we did have a little chance last night to go out to a Shakespearean Theatre they have built here. The staff there gave us a tour into the dungeons underneath the theatre, more specifically the dressing rooms, prop rooms and what have you.

The story behind this theatre is extremely interesting. It was built back in 1952 when Stratford, a city of less than 30k inhabitants, was going through a structural change in its economy. The city council back then decided to strategically focus on arts and tourism through a very interesting differentiation strategy. They combined the old classical theatre with a twist of new theatre in an old Shakespearean setting where the attendees sit very close to the stage itself.

This strategy has been very successful for the city itself. The theatre generates revenues for the city in the 100+ million Canadian a year and direct taxes worth 50+ million. During the high season the theatre itself employs more than 1000 people and with that is the biggest employer of the city. Annually they produce 14 productions in the 4 theatres they have in town with about 100 shows in each production. Talk about scalability in arts!

What interests me is that the government on a city level has taken a very business like approach to positioning themselves in a blue ocean market and thus making it relevant on a North American scale. It reminds me so much of the situation many of the Finnish cities are in and yet very stubborn to capitalise on those possibilities. There’s so much for the Finns to learn – I’d recommend many of the Finnish politicians on a local level study the strategic road the city of Stratford has taken in the last 100 years. Truly great stuff.

I’m in the process of finalising my presentation for Canada 3.0 – a conference held in Stratford, Canada on digitalisation of the society and pretty much everything around it. I’m travelling there together with Lari from Culminatum and talking about commercialisation of digital innovations. I’m going to be there representing both Gyllene Skor and ArcticStartup – bringing in knowledge from the Nordics.

I’m going to be talking about what the ecosystem here in Finland is and how that supports digital innovations and their commercialisation, both in startups and larger corporations. Furthermore, I’m going to be positioning my talk to the private side of the society. I’m going to talk about entrepreneurial experiences regarding the system we’ve built here in Finland and how entrepreneurs and corporationas are, for example, leveraging their R&D costs from organisations such as Tekes.

If you had 30 minutes to talk to the leaders of Canada on digitalisation of the society and economy – what would you like to tell them? What is the most important thing in your opinion for them to take into account when planning the future of Canada?