Iceland Innovation week is a success, insights from visiting Reykjavík

We were invited to Iceland by Business Iceland to learn more about innovation, sustainability and diversity in the country during their Iceland Innovation week. Over three days in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland we met a variety of founders, VCs, startups and members of the local business ecosystem geared to support Icelandic innovation.

Iceland Innovation week is a success, insights from visiting Reykjavík

Iceland as a whole has a population of not much more than 300,000, similar to the population of Coventry, and definitely not very many. Having visited Tel Aviv, Singapore and Helsinki on similar innovation tours you do sense some similarities in terms of a country / city state that needs to be outward facing, low taxation, and incentives to encourage entrepreneurs to base their businesses here. Iceland is very much in a similar position, but with 1/10th to 1/20 of the population of some of their potential competitors. The everyone is a phone call away vibe is very much apparent. We interviewed the minister for innovation for example with very little hassle in a pleasant and informal setting. Similarly the president dropped into one of the morning talks and was informative, personable and pragmatic too.

Simply by flying to Iceland it makes it crystal clear that they are pretty much half way to North America and beyond. It was almost three hours from Dublin, and, initially I was wondering why there were so many Americans on the flight, the vast majority in fact. However Iceland Air is running an offer where you can break your journey at little to no extra cost, before your final five hours, approx, hop onto the USA etc. This island in the middle on the northern Atlantic is therefore very much at the midpoint between the two continents. Once we landed we were frequently told this at many of the presentations, but the reality is that the geography speaks for itself.

Talking of geography, Reykjavík and the run from the airport itself, 48kms away, is surprisingly flat. On landing it reminded more of a Spanish desert than the epic volcanoes and geothermal sites you might be expecting. It is of course all there, in Iceland, but somewhat in the distance from the capital city itself. Apparently almost 3/4 of the whole population live within an hour of the capital too, which, on an island that is not small when compared to Ireland or the UK, means that it must be pretty quiet and low populated everywhere else. If you are planning to really see Iceland then do plan to get out of Reykjavík if you want to see more than an almost lunar landscape.

We found the people open, accessible, and interesting in their awareness of the challenges and opportunities that being based in Iceland offered. Childcare was touted as very favourable, as well as LGBT* facing openness, with the country scoring highly in global rankings for quality of life and tolerance towards others. The weather was perhaps a little surprising, at times hovering around 6 degrees, though they promised that this was untypical for this time of year. It is probably fair to say that Iceland is never going to be super warm, but, as parts of Europe hit 40+ degrees, even this could become a positive factor in the future too.

We definitely found it informative to visit and we hope to feature some more interesting and innovative clean and green tech coming out of the country in the future too.

More about Business Iceland

Business Iceland is a public-private partnership that works to improve the competitiveness of Icelandic companies in foreign markets and to stimulate exports from Iceland through marketing, brand building and export and trade services.

We flew to Iceland via Dublin on IcelandAir as a guest of Business Iceland.

About Icelandair

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