Business Traveller (Asia-Pacific)
Copenhagen blends business and pleasure with aplomb
The Danish capital combines business and pleasure with aplomb. Is Copenhagen’s progressive attitude at the heart of its success?
Ahigh-heeled cyclist in a crisp suit passes me on the street, making a hands-free call as she pedals. It’s just after 3pm on a Friday, and the concrete promenades lining Copenhagen’s three rectangular lakes – commonly mistaken for a single river – are baking in the unexpected spring heat. At the nearby harbour, a powerboat carrying businesspeople guns down the satiny stretch of water towards Sweden. On days like this, “bridging” is also a thing in the Danish capital, where a denim-clad crowd perches along the walls of Dronning Louises Bridge, sipping cans of pilsner and socialising until sunrise.
You can’t possibly have made it through 2016 without hearing the word hygge (pronounced hue-gah). Just in case, it’s the Danish ideal of appreciating life’s simple pleasures: family, friends, nature, soothing environments, a feeling of “cosy togetherness”. As a nation, Danes make time in their daily lives to appreciate the small but important things. It seems the rest of the world needs a manual to implement this – The Little Book of Hygge: the Danish Way to Live Well was a bestselling book in 2016. And, consistently stealing the top spots of “most liveable” and “happiest” in city rankings, Copenhagen is certainly getting something right.
The enviable Danish lifestyle could be a trump card when it comes to attracting overseas talent. “I don’t think this factor should be underestimated,” says Claus Lonborg, CEO of Copenhagen Capacity, which supports foreign companies, investors and talent seeking opportunities in Greater Copenhagen.
“If you want to attract young talent, you need to offer a cool place to live, with the right framework for developing a business. Today, young people want to know: ‘What’s it like living in Copenhagen? Where can I hang out?’ They spend [more] time communicating about these things [than] about the actual job and company they’d be working for.”
“If you want to attract young talent, you need to offer a cool place to live, with the right framework for developing a business”
WORK-LIFE BALANCE
According to the “2017 Better Life” report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), Danish people have one of the best work-life balances in the world, with only 2 per cent regularly working long hours (more than 50 a week), compared to the international average of 13 per cent. At the same time, in a study from Expert Market that divided the GDP of the world’s biggest economies by the number of hours worked per person, Denmark was ranked the fourth most productive country in the world (after Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden, respectively). What’s more, Denmark is consistently voted the best place in the world to be a woman – thanks to its flexible parental leave policy, its earnings-based childcare system and its active promotion of gender equality. To top it all off, national healthcare and education are virtually free.
A SCANDI STATE OF MIND
It’s easy to paint Denmark as a utopia when, of course, not everything is rosy. Its harsh anti-immigration policies have been widely criticised by the international community, and its normally buoyant economy had taken a slight dip at the time of writing.
But overall, Denmark’s progressive nature has created a society outsiders look upon with admiration, and a fitting business environment for blue-sky thinking. A key aspect of this is Denmark’s digitised lifestyle, which cultivates great conditions for launching new products. “The Danish government committed to the digital agenda early on,” says Lonborg. “Everything from renewing your passport to getting a work permit has been completely digitalised.
“As a citizen, if every time you interact with your government, it’s digital, you automatically become much more tech savvy, which develops quite an interesting test market for new technologies. I think that savviness is what’s driving and inspiring people here.”
Skype (a joint venture with Stockholm-based entrepreneurs), Unity (the creators of the leading global platform for building computer games) and Just Eat are some of the success stories from Copenhagen’s thriving tech sector, each of them unicorns (companies valued at more than US$1 billion). Major IT corporations have a presence in the city, including IBM, Microsoft and Google, which has its Nordic headquarters here. What’s more, the University of California established its first out-of-state university campus in the Danish capital.
How do Copenhagen’s start-up conditions compare to the other Scandinavian capitals? “There are probably more similarities between the Nordic countries than there are differences,” says Lonborg. “We have so much shared history and culture. Having said that, there are a few ways in which Copenhagen stands out. We have the best-connected airport in the Nordic region. In a regional context, we’re not that expensive. And it’s very easy to work with the authorities.”