The above two groups got together this week to show that they are committed to measures to combat Climate Change.
The government and the big companies all announced that they have already implemented measures to reduce the use of fossil fuels, to improve energy efficiency, to reduce their carbon footprint and hazardous emissions.
The Finns are many years ahead of the rest of the world, along with our other Nordic nations, in reducing our carbon footprint and reduced harmful emissions.
The big companies have understood the above and done a good job. Most of them intend to be carbon neutral by 2035, and for that we must be grateful.
These same companies have also understood two more matters:
- Climate Change policies can cut costs and improve productivity…
- … and the great expertise they learn from such developments, for both products and services, are valuable exports.
However, they also issued several warnings about time and money… Innovations take 15 to 20 years to be fully implemented, and research and development cost money.
The time factor is understandable, but it is a fact that big companies are seldom the drivers of fast growth. That honour must be given to SME’s. The same is true for employment. Big companies trim staff numbers while SME’s employ many…
Big companies also innovate less than SME’s, that are also agile in developing new ideas. Big companies are often more concerned about barriers to competition rather than working on cutting-edge innovation.
With the above comments in mind, it is perhaps worth noting that perhaps the government should be working more to support SME’s rather than working with the big companies. SME’s have less opportunities to finance their investments and have limited resources to produce growth by expanding into the export markets.
Finland is a small country with a tiny domestic market – that puts Finnish SME’s at a big disadvantage compared to German or French SME’s.
