THE FUTURE IS HERE
From microchip implants to billion-dollar start-ups, Stockholm is leading the field in terms of innovation. Jenny Southan reports
From eco-districts to subterranean data centres; mega start-ups to biohacking, Stockholm never stops innovating
Patrick Mesterton has a microchip embedded in his hand. The chief executive of Epicentre, Stockholm’s first “house of innovation”, he was one of 60 members to voluntarily have RFID (radio frequency identification) tags implanted into their bodies last year. The size of a grain of rice, they are inserted under the skin with a syringe.“It hurt,” Mesterton says.
The microchip works like a contactless debit card or office ID pass. With the swipe of a hand, members of the 8,000 sqm Epicentre co-working hub can pay for snacks from vending machines, open electronic security doors and activate photocopiers. “Every quarter we do a ‘chip and beer’ event so members can use our systems,” Mesterton says. “For example, by using your chip you can print on-demand, instead of sensitive documents coming out when you aren’t there.”
Developed by Swedish biohacking group BioNyfiken, each implant has a unique binary number that can sync with an infinite number of readers. As the technology becomes more widespread, people will be able to gain access to their local gym, buy a sandwich from a nearby café, or send a virtual business card to a client’s smartphone. There will be no need for credit cards, keys, ID passes, metro tickets or PINs.
INSPIRING ECOSYSTEMS
Launched last year in Stockholm’s downtown business district, Epicentre has open-plan workspaces, studios and offices for both tech start-ups and established multinationals such as Microsoft and IBM. The former are there to learn how to scale, while the latter take part in “innovation labs”, but collaboration is a big part of it, too. Its 300 member companies (plus 1,500 individuals) also benefit from seminars, hackathons and “digital safaris” for prototype demos.
Mesterton says: “In a year, the average company we have here has grown 350 per cent. For example, Splay is the largest YouTube network we have in Sweden. They are owned by one of the traditional TV companies but have based themselves here as they want to grow in a different way. They were about 14 people when they arrived and are about 70 today.”
Located on Malmskillnadsgatan, Epicentre is part of a futuristic quarter called Urban Escape (urbanescape.se), which is made up of five buildings being developed by AMF Fastigheter. Next year, a vast rooftop garden will be added, along with restaurants, bars and two lifestyle hotels from the Nordic Choice group – the 343-room At Six and 200-room Hobo. The other buildings, for offices, retail, apartments and events, will be transformed by 2019.
The first phase of a new Epicentre site opened close by on Master Samuelsgatan in the summer, with completion of the 11,000 sqm space set for December. Virtual reality company Resolution Games, mentoring programme Google for Entrepreneurs and social media app FishBrain will be the first residents. Another co-working space is SUP46, which moved to its new location on Regeringsgatan earlier this year. In 2015, its tech start-up members collectively raised US$31 million in funding.
START-UP CENTRAL
Last year, Stockholm was ranked third in the European Digital City Index (behind London and Amsterdam) and, for a period, gave birth to more unicorns (billion-dollar start-ups) than any other place on the
planet except Silicon Valley. No mean feat given its population of only one million people. Torborj Bengtsson, business development manager for Stockholm Business Region, predicts that Truecaller – an online phone directory and call blocker – is going to be the next unicorn coming out of the capital. It already has more than 100 million users.
Stockholm is a forward-looking city that is proud to have the world’s first “feminist” government, ensuring gender equality at every level of policymaking and allocation of resources. LGBT issues are also prioritised. Meanwhile, the motto of King Carl XVI Gustav is: “For Sweden – with the times.” If you happen to see the daily changing of the guard outside the palace, there is a chance you will hear the brass band playing dance hits by Swedish House Mafia.
Fostering progress are organisations such as Stockholm Innovation and Growth (stockholminnovation.com), a non-profit incubator based in Kista Science City, 20 minutes from downtown. As well as coaching more than 180 start-ups, it recently backed a new 1,000 sqm co-working space, H2, for digital health companies in the Hagastaden district.
While fledgling businesses prefer the vibe in the city centre, large companies such as Intel, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Huawei have chosen to position themselves in Kista. It is also home to the HQ of Swedish telecom giant Ericsson, which helped to bring the world 3G. In 2018, Stockholm will be the first of two cities on the planet (along with Estonian capital Tallinn) to have 5G, which workers in Kista are trialling.
The city council’s Vision 2040 blueprint intends for Stockholm to be “the most connected city in the world”. The new Urban ICT Arena for digital development launched in the tech park a few months ago – projects include the “Not Boring 5G Bike”, demonstrating a bright future for the Internet of Things in Sweden.
UNDERGROUND INNOVATION
Getting around Stockholm is made easy by its stunning underground metro system. Operating since 1950 and extending today to a 100km network of raw, cave-like tunnels, its imaginatively decorated stations have earned it the title of the “world’s longest art gallery”. Standout stops include T-Centralen, Kungstradgarden and Solna Centrum (pictured on our cover).
Electric car-sharing scheme Car2Go is also popular. A quick hop over the bridge from hipster enclave Sodermalm, where people stop for cinnamon buns and artisan coffee, is the city’s first “sustainable” district, Hammarby Sjostad. Stockholm is a city of 14 islands so is surrounded by water – walking around pristine Hammarby Sjostad, you see boats moored outside modern apartment buildings and people reading the paper by bird-friendly marshland.
Tour guide Marco Giertz explains that there is no need for rubbish trucks in this neighbourhood as trash is sucked out of apartments through high-speed vacuum pipes. Toilet waste is turned into biogas that runs the local buses while, with the help of solar
panels, houses consume half the electricity of conventional ones. A mountain made out of landfill waste is used as a ski slope in winter. By 2030, a whole new eco-district will emerge on the shores of Lake Vartan. The Royal Seaport, as it will be known, will have 12,000 homes and 35,000 offices.
FORWARD THINKING
Innovation is something that has been rewarded for well over a century here. The Nobel Prize has been presented annually in Stockholm for 115 years, and a new brass-clad, triple-stack Nobel Centre is planned for a waterfront site near the National Museum by Nybroviken bay. Designed by David Chipperfield and Christoph Felger, construction is expected to start next year.
According to Bengtsson, other contributing factors to the city’s cutting-edge approach are a strong engineering heritage, subsidised home computing in the 1990s and a global outlook that comes from being a small country. “You have to think internationally early on,” he says.
Epicentre’s Mesterton highlights Sweden’s excellent state schools and free university education, as well as inspiring role models. He says: “When you look at people in Sweden who have had big success, they are very open. Niklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype [bought by Microsoft in 2011 for US$8.5 billion], is super-active in helping new
entrepreneurs grow.” Other mega successes to come out of the country include music streaming service Spotify; King, maker of the Candy Crush Saga game; and Minecraft game developer Mojang.
Bengtsson says: “The Nordics has 3 per cent of the European population but 11 per cent of the venture capital, and 53 per cent of the billion-dollar-plus exits [when a company goes public or is sold to another firm]. Between 2009 and 2014, Stockholm had almost 20 per cent of the European venture investment into fintech startups – twice the amount of Germany, Switzerland and Austria combined.” In total, the tech sector employs 18 per cent of people in Stockholm, while roughly 23,000 new businesses are registered in the city every year.
The global move towards cloud computing means that data storage has become big business in the Nordics. In 2015, it was reported that the data centre industry in Sweden generated Skr 13 billion (£1 billion) towards the country’s GDP.
One of the most impressive facilities in Stockholm is the Bahnhof Pionen data centre, which inhabits a former Cold War nuclear bunker under White Mountain in Sodermalm. With half-metre-thick steel doors and a backup generator from a German submarine, it used to look after Wikileaks’ servers.
Bahnhof co-ordinator Johan Sandell says: “Data storage is getting bigger as people know Sweden is safe. They don’t want to put it in the US as they don’t know who has access to it. It is safe from hacking – and from governments.” The Bond-like lair has a “floating” glass conference room and green walls of living plants, while the heat generated by the servers is used to warm nearby houses. In Stockholm, evolution always means innovation.