The best Swedish rock band ever in my book is a group called KENT. It is one if my favourite bands of all times and I loved them from moment I first heard them play twenty years ago. I love their music. 


KENT is the by far most popular vand in Sweden and Scandinavia and very successful. 


Now the band has decided to stop and they are doing a farewell tour this autumn. I will miss them. 


Tonight I, together with one of my daughters, went to Oslo in Norway and watched them play. It was a magic performance by the band. 


I have seen many concerts but this could be the best ever. 

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has been measuring nations’ competitiveness for nearly four decades because it is the best way to assess countries’ future productivity. 

Productivity, of course, is important as the best way to boost income – after all you can only earn more if you work harder or smarter – and this, at the end of the day plays a large (but not exclusive by any means) factor in determining wellbeing.

My country Sweden is doing very well in all measurement of innovation and development 

The current methodology of the Global Competitiveness Index has been in use since 2006, and while it is still the best measurement around, WEF has decided to acknowledge that the onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing again the nature of competitiveness.

WEf is seeing innovation play a much more prominent role in the development of emerging as well as rich countries.

Thus the Global Competitiveness Index will change to reflect this. As more and more data becomes available, WEF has the opportunity to take into account the changing dynamics of global competitiveness. 

Innovation, for example, has always been an ecosystem rather than a linear exchange between academia and society, so there is a need to demonstrate this by capturing the relationship between innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. Training and education, too, are vital enablers of future prosperity but it’s not just a matter of enrolment or even the quality of science and math education; economies are built on out-of-the-box thinking and creative thinking and this needs to be measured too.
I find this a very interesting area and we should closely follow the developments in the future. 

To read the article, click here: The world is changing – can the US maintain its competitive edge?
Source: World Economic Forum

This morning I visited my local newspaper in Ystad. 

The paper, Ystads Allehanda, is the leading newspaper in the region that I am from, Österlen in the region Scania (Skåne) in the South of Sweden. 

I met with a friemd of line sports journalist Jan Ohlsson. Itbis always a pleasure to talk sports with a passionate person like Jan. 

It was great to see the inside of the Newspaper I grow up with. I remember how my grandfather and father always were reading Ystads Allehanda. I did too. Especially the local sports news. To check how my favourite clubs were doing. 

The business of news, especially the printed news papers, are going through a major transformation and change due to the Internet developments over the last decade. 

But as they say, the news is always the news. Or as Mark Knopfler in Dire Straits once wrote, 

He sticks to his guns

He take the road as it comes               

It take the shine off his shoes

He’s too fast to stop              

He take it over the top                

He make a line in the news.                      

[News, Communiqué, 1979]