Esko Aho, former Prime Minister of Finland and Executive Vice President of Nokia, and now a senior fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, visited Peking University on March 22nd, and gave a speech entitled “Creating Global Competitiveness through Investments in Science, Technology and Innovation” at the PKU School of Government.

Keep in mind innovation and education. There is no planned innovation. You can provide good environment, good system for innovation, but you cannot plan for it.

Look at individuals. Many individuals have made successful stories because they have been aware where things are going to go. Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates, they were educated in the information and technology revolution. Look at countries: Finland, Singapore, South Korea, Israel, all these countries have started the investment in information technology. Before, Finland was left behind by others in science and technology innovation. We invested only 1% of our GDP in that area before 1990s. So Finland decided that we had to do something for the future. We decided that in ten years, we would double our investment. In 1990 we were investing 2% of our GDP. At that time if you ask me whether the money was well spent, the answer is no: the investment was for no return. But if you ask the same question five years later, 90% of people would say that the investment in science and technology innovation was the best investment Finland had done. They had never expected that the information service could grow so fast, and they didn’t know that the success could be so glaring and that the benefit of the investment could last till now even.

I have always been wondering why China succeeds. China was able to understand what future is going to require, and what kind of strategic, institutional changes you have to make in order to be there where big things are going to happen. But there are still many who refuse to do that. They believe that they can keep their old system, and they start too late the reforms in order for the system to grow. So this is a very important lesson. If you want to be good in science and technology innovation, you have to understand what is going to happen in the future.

My question is: what is going to be the next big thing? Where is the place we are going to now? Because if you run to the same business, where all companies are into the same strategies that all the others are using, you are not going to have a future in it. You can be able to survive, but you are not able to win. As for my personal prediction, the next big thing is the integration of the physical and the digital. When I was prime minister in 1990s, we had bankruptcies. And if you ask: what to do with the banks? The answer would be: you have to keep the distance to the closest bank office as close as possible. Bank was physical at that time. But if you ask today what a bank is, it is nothing more physical. It’s a digital thing. Now you can use your computer or mobile phone to get access to your bank account. Bank is a combination of the physical and the digital. The same thing is happening in other areas, but mainly in areas which are entertainment driven or social network driven.

When I was in Harvard, I looked at analysis on how much time American consumers are spending on different mobile applications – can you imagine: 40% of the use is game; roughly 30% social networks. So the fact is that today we are using mobile technologies mainly for entertainment and social purposes. The big benefit is still to come, because financial services, communication, traffic, health care and education, all these things are still rather traditional where digital technologies are not that much provided.

We spent hundreds of millions of money on games, but we are using a minor amount of money for educational resources. If the next big thing is for the physical and the digital to converge, why is that not going to happen in education or in health care? Companies like Nokia are not interested in investing in education or health care as long as they do not know the future of these areas. And it’s completely the government’s responsibility. Without the government’s influence and interaction, you cannot get those things done. That’s why collaborations between business, government and politics are so important for the future growth of a nation.

These are basically topics on a higher national, political level. But they are issues that have an impact on the life of all of us. And why universities are also playing such a critical role in these issues? People are not able to create digital health care service because not many best physicians are able to create a digital system for it. Their training in the university is not giving them that capacity; in the same way, not the best ICT specialists are able to create the digital health care system, because they have no understanding of what the basic things in health care are about. They don’t understand the process of health services and operations. That’s why we need to create inter-disciplinary courses, inter-disciplinary skills, and inter-disciplinary environments. And I think universities can play a big role in creating such environments. Universities can create laboratories or centers where that kind of integrations can take place. Especially, universities are able to provide the kind of learning, teaching and research programs where different disciplines are integrated and converged.

That is one way to create inter-disciplinary skills. Another way to do that is to create partnerships. The government and the companies are starting to work together. Nokia is aware to do that. Today in the ICT sector, many of Nokia’s competitors are its partners. So there is a combination of competition and cooperation. And that is a very important part in the innovation and in the inter-disciplinary skills.

But then there is still more for you, and for me. I believe that the most successful personal characters are made by those who have the ability to understand several sectors, several disciplines in the society. That’s why we need mobility – mobility between different sectors. I have a personal example that I’ve been doing this for the past fifteen years. I know it’s not that easy. It’s easy to say. If you are a politician, why don’t you stay there? Why do you go to business or go to academic areas? It’s difficult to do that. For business people as well, it is not easy to move to government or academic fields. And it is same to universities. It is not easy to get out of here. But there is a reason to move. As a former prime minister, it is not that easy to go to a company. I was sitting in the first board meeting in late 2008 in New York when I worked for Nokia. And I have to admit I didn’t understand what they were speaking about. After half a year, I can understand what they are doing. Reward comes when you start to learn what you had no idea about. And someday you come to recognize that you are a person better than you were before. So this horizontal movement, instead of a vertical movement, is much more difficult, but it’s very much rewarding. It’s extremely rewarding.

So this is what I believe the future universities will be. I believe that the inter-disciplinary experience will be extremely valuable for the future.

Edited by Li Yi