Survival through Adaptation

Our last visits in Gothenburg and Copenhagen took us to a start up incubator named Chalmers Innovation along with two established banks with Nordea Bank and Denmark National Bank. Traditionally, the biggest companies in Sweden are owned by a few major owners which has persisted over many years of time. This idea contrasts with those in America in which the companies face a shorter life span. Chalmers Innovation focuses on this aspect of quick moving businesses in choosing which start ups to support. They understand that in the current marketplace you have continuously be ready to change your business model and be ready to defend it when necessary. The importance in starting a new company isn’t simply to have one single great business plan but understand the needs of your customers and adapting your idea/invention toward them. By adapting to the changes in the global marketplace, Chalmers Innovation is better suited toward helping their clients grow and expand rather than failing to innovate themselves.

When we visited Copenhagen, our first company visit took us to Nordea Bank, one of the largest bank firms in Northern Europe. Here, we learned that despite their growing profits, they are actually reducing the amount of physical locations around the world. They rationalize this change by citing the continued growth in mobile banking. Similar to how Chalmers Innovation looks at the world, Nordea Bank is allowing itself to adapt to the changes happening around them. In a rapidly evolving world of technology, people nowadays are doing more things on the go and utilizing their mobile devices more than ever. The result of Nordea’s new strategy namely in the form of continued profits will be unveiled in the future but I believe that they are making the right change in doing so. When we walked around the Scandinavian countries, we noted that public transportation is everywhere. People are not as likely to stop at a physical store in order to conduct their transactions or even perform inquiries. The future of banking for their customers lies in accessibility and quickness. By emphasizing more on the mobile aspect of their strategy, they have the opportunity to not only cut down costs but also strengthen their current position.