[purplelobster]

For its small size, Sweden is an outlier in terms of successful big companies, however most of those were formed a long time ago.

H&M: 1947, Ericsson: 1876, Volvo: 1927, Ikea: 1943, ABB (formerly ACEA): 1883, AstraZeneca (formerly Astra AB): 1913, SAAB: 1937, Electrolux: 1919, etc

These have been the backbone of Swedish innovation for a long time, but we can't count on them anymore. We need more Google's and Apple's. There's Spotify, Digital Illusions (now EA), Skype (sort of), but there are no big successes anymore.

[jlarsson]

I agree, and a problem is that many of the promising companies are sold (for example Dice, Skype and TAT) to large, usually foreign, corporations before they get the chance to grow.

[purplelobster]

Right, and not only that, a large number of companies move their headquarters elsewhere, such as Ikea to the Netherlands, Spotify to London etc. If I ever start my own company, I'll make sure never to be that greedy. I see the welfare state as an investment in people and businesses. Investment relies on getting paid by a few outliers. What is essentially happening is that when a company becomes successful it just says "well thanks for all the support and opportunity, but now that we're successful we don't really want to pay you back, so we're just going to go somewhere else, problem?".

[mongol]

H&M as a huge, multinational success-story is not that old. It was listed in 1974, and the first store outside of Scandinavia opened in 1976. It is older than Apple, but I say it is a different generation than the other companies in your list.