The Nordic Builder
How Open Source and Inner Drive Fuel Innovation
We often hear about Silicon Valley’s tech giants and their race for billion-dollar valuations. But there’s another way to build—one that values collaboration over competition, purpose over pure profit, and open innovation over locked-down monopolies. This is the Nordic way.
As explored in the book The Nordic Theory of Everything by Anu Partanen, Nordic entrepreneurs, developers, and artists have a unique approach to creating things—whether it’s world-changing software, gripping TV dramas, or sustainable businesses. They prove that you don’t need cutthroat capitalism to drive innovation. Instead, their success stems from a combination of intrinsic motivation, strong social support, and a conviction that the best creations should be shared.
At the heart of this philosophy? Open-source technology. From Linux to MySQL, Nordic builders have shaped the digital world by giving away their work for free—and still thriving. Now, as AI and deep tech transform society, their model offers a blueprint for innovation that benefits everyone, not just a few.
Let’s explore why the Nordic way of building might be the future.
The Inner Hunger That Drives Extraordinary Work
"My experience is that every good, dramatic story comes from some kind of inner hunger or necessity to create it."
This observation from Sveistrup captures the essence of the Nordic builder's mindset. Unlike environments where work is purely transactional, Nordic creators—whether writing the next great television drama or coding revolutionary software—often operate from a place of intrinsic motivation. The work itself matters more than the specific structure of monetary rewards.
This philosophy challenges the American assumption that people primarily need financial carrots to produce excellent work. As the text reminds us:
"The human desire to excel isn't as fragile and weak as the American faith in the profit motive might suggest. Maybe there's more to life than money."
Open Source as the Ultimate Nordic Export
Perhaps no domain better illustrates the Nordic approach to building than the open-source software movement. The examples are legendary:
Linux, the operating system running on most of the world's servers and supercomputers, began as a student project by Finland's Linus Torvalds, released freely to the world.
MySQL, the database powering Google, Facebook, and countless other giants, was created by Finn Monty Widenius and Swedish partners—again, given freely with monetization coming later through services.
These weren't charity projects but manifestations of a different philosophy about value creation. As the book notes:
"Widenius and his team have, in the years since, nevertheless made good money, but they did so by providing support and other services, while the software itself remains free to the world."
This model—create something valuable first, monetize in ways that don't restrict access—is quintessentially Nordic and increasingly relevant in AI and deep tech.
Why This Matters for AI and Public Sector Innovation
As artificial intelligence becomes the next foundational technology, the Nordic approach offers crucial lessons:
Collaboration Over Competition: Open-source AI models (like those from Finland's TurkuNLP) demonstrate how sharing accelerates progress.
Public-Private Symbiosis: Nordic countries show how government support for education and research creates fertile ground for private innovation.
Sustainable Monetization: The Nordic model proves you can build profitable businesses around open ecosystems (see Redis, Elastic, etc.).
The book observes this balance:
"Nordic societies are also leading innovators in the public and [private sectors]... concerns that providing citizens with generous services... will take away people's incentive to work represent a sad misjudgment of human nature."
The Nordic Way Forward
In an age where technology's societal impact grows daily, the Nordic builder's philosophy—inner drive combined with open collaboration—provides a blueprint for responsible innovation. Their success with open source suggests how we might approach AI:
Develop core technologies through academic and open collaborations
Commercialize through services, customization, and support
Keep foundational tools accessible to all
As the world grapples with AI ethics, the concentration of tech power, and sustainable innovation models, perhaps the path forward was laid out long ago by a Finnish student who shared his operating system with the world. The Nordic theory of building reminds us that the greatest creations often come not from the fear of scarcity but from the abundance of human potential, when we're free to create for creation's sake.
If you are building something in the Nordics or Japan, I’d love to learn more from you. Please reach out to me at nobody@firstfollowers.co.
Stay weird!
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