Information technology – Tallinn’s international competition advantage
PRESS RELEASE
16 April 2009
Information technology – Tallinn’s international competition advantage
According to a study comparing the cities around the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has greater creative economic potential than Riga and Vilnius, but is still beaten by the smart communities of the Scandinavian countries. The strength of our capital lies in our achievements and capability in the creation and adoption of IT and software solutions, while limited openness and the competitiveness of our higher education are the weaknesses.
Creative Future: Growth Potentialities for Baltic Cities, the study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers in cooperation with Hamburg International Institute for Economics, compared nine cities in the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea by innovation, knowledge potential and openness, aiming at using the results to point at the competitive advantages and possibilities of the cities. The comparison included the Baltic capitals Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, and regional centres from other countries: Turu in Finland, Umeå in Sweden, Ǻrhus in Denmark, Gdansk in Poland and Kiel and Rostock in Germany.
The results of the study divide the said cities into three groups by potential. Tallinn is in the medium group together with Kiel and Rostock, ahead of Riga, Vilnius and Gdansk, but beaten by Turku, Umeå and Ǻrhus.
According to the authors of the study, Tallinn’s main strengths are the capabilities in information technology and software industry and the openness of the community to new technologies. They recommended that the governors of the city continue investing in this competition advantage in order to develop the city into a true regional high technology centre that is open and multicultural. Tallinn’s weaknesses in the knowledge based economy perspective include the negative demographic trend, the low competitiveness of high schools and the limited openness, in regards to both the national immigration policy and international transport connections. One way to increase the competitiveness of the Estonian IT sector would be to provide tax incentives to highly qualified and well-paid work force, for instance by establishing an upper limit to social tax.
Teet Tender, Advisory Service Line Leader at AS PricewaterhouseCoopers, says that the results of the study should be taken as a compliment to both Tallinn and the whole of Estonia and he does not think our small size is an obstacle. “Comparative studies often focus on big cities, but Europe has numerous examples of rapidly developing wealthy cities with great knowledge potential and good living environment, the population of which is several times smaller than that of Tallinn.”
Background:
The Creative Future study compared 9 small and medium sized cities with the population of 100,000–700,000 which are regional or national centres of the Baltic Sea countries as well as ports, except for Vilnius.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (www.pwc.com) is the world’s largest organisation providing professional business consultancy services to the public and private sectors. Relying on the knowledge and skills of more than 155,000 employees in 153 countries, PwC helps its customers create value, increase trust and give the market true messages about the companies’ activities. PricewaterhouseCoopers Estonia employs nearly 100 professionals in the field.
Further information:
Kaire Lehtsaar
PricewaterhouseCoopers’i turundusjuht
Telephone 614 1800
Dr Astrid Könönen
Head of the research team
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