Attracting foreign investments is essential to keep global leadership in the ICT sector and to stay competitive.
Define the success factors and joint efforts in the FDI attraction.
The Baltic Sea Region is one of the world’s ICT Powerhouses and the countries of the region have demonstrated their attractiveness for foreign companies. As an example, Microsoft has invested more in the Nordic-Baltic region than in the US, India and China over the past 10 years.
In a unique EU supported initiative, the Investment Promotion Agencies of the region are coming together to discuss how this position can be maintained and expanded. The attraction of FDI to the ICT sector is a top priority to all Investment Promotion Agencies of the Baltic Sea Region (IPAs) and the third meeting of the Investment Promotion Agencies is taking place in connection with the 15th Baltic Development Forum Summit in Riga 29 – 30 May, which this year will focus on investment, competitiveness and business development, including the ICT sector. The third IPAs meeting will take place at 10.00, 30 May in Riga at the BDF Summit venue.
The ICT sector and the digital market are key drivers for economic growth and the internationalisation of the economies of the Baltic Sea Region. Christian Ketels, the author of the State of the Region Report has documented this in his competitiveness report. Stockholm region has been successful in attracting investments to the capital and not least in the ICT sector and the digital industry. CEO of the Stockholm Business Region, Olle Zetterberg will share some of the success factors and address the question: Can the Baltic Sea Region present a convincing case through joint efforts and strong innovation networks?
The speakers and participants will investigate main success factors for the decision to place businesses and companies in the Baltic Sea Region as well as take up concrete collaboration initiatives between the BSR IPAs to promote the ICT sector on overseas markets. Baltic Development Forum is preparing this open session as well as the Investment Promotion Agencies closed meeting. Andris Ozols, CEO of the Latvian Investment and Development Agency is co-hosting the meeting and he invites the participants to a reception at the Latvian IT Demo Center on 29 May at 17.30.
The session discussion will be inspired by inputs from the speakers:
- Andris Ozols, CEO of the Latvian Investment and Development Agency
- Nicolas Albana, Managing Director, Atea Global Services SSC
- Jorgen Bardenfleth, Strategy Director of Microsoft International
- Olle Zetterberg, CEO, Stockholm Business Region.
- Christian Ketels, Dr., Principal Associate at the Harvard Business School
The BSR IPAs initiative is a part of the ONE BSR project and its aim is to enable the IPAs to meet regularly to exchange best practice and information on how the investment promotion work is organised and pursued, as well as find areas where the IPAs should joint efforts, and through that increase the success in attracting investments to the region.
This will be the third BSR IPAs meeting as two previous took place in Stockholm and Hamburg. In a European perspective, it is rather unique that all of the region’s IPAs gather during the meetings, as most of them are each others’ biggest and strongest competitors. However tradition of cooperation in the region showed that it was possible to overcome these obstacles and find synergies. For more information about the BSR IPAs’ meetings and the ONE BSR project, please visit the BDF website