What is the value of beeing the best?

I want start out by telling you a little bit about my country, we are 5 million people and we have our own language and currently it is one of the richest countries in the world if you compare the median wealth of Danes to other populations. Not very many generations ago it was a rather poor country. But what really intrigue me is that this small country has been the farther of many cool technologies and yet we have failed to profit from these technologies.

1.) Denmark was a proud ship building nation for many centuries, we build the first boats that crossed the Atlantic, 500 years before Colombus. Until 2008 we build the largest container ships in the world, which has helped shape the world trade as we know it today. You would think that being the best in the world at something so important to the progress in the world would be important, yet we stopped doing it.

2.) Danmark was the leading country in the world in production of Windmills and Wind power systems until 2010. Windpower is currently the fastest growing green energy source. You would think that being the best in the world at something so important to the progress in the world would be important, yet we already sold our gold egg to foreign investors and we will soon stop all R & D and production in Denmark.

3.) Danish engineers practically invented the Digital Radios which is the basis of all mobile telephone and mobile data connections today. Both NMT and GSM and Bluetooth have its roots in Denmark. We had many of the first mobile phone companies, which were later acquired by Nokia, Siemens, Motorola and Philips to help them understand and handle what at this time was a very difficult technology. Today we still have a few big R & D departments from companies like Nokia in Denmark. You would think that being the best in the world at something which everyone agree is going to be the primary driver of the human evolution over the next 10 years would be important, yet we stopped doing it.

4.) Danish software engineers has had a major role in in the 5 of the 10 biggest programming languages in the world today. C++, C#, Php, Delphi, Pascal, Java and JavaScript. Many, my self included think that software is going to be the only real driver towards technological singularity, thus it is VERY ODD that the brains behind the majority of modern programming languages come from the same (very, very small) country. Needless to say, most of them does not live in Denmark any more..

5.) OK, so all of the above is in the past, what does Denmark have today?? I think we have something very cool! 2 out of the 3 leading companies in the world who have the technology to produce second generation gasoline are from Denmark. First generation gasoline is made from food, second generation is made from waste products from food production, stuff which is typically burned today. This technology is enzymes that can catalyze the process of converting one type of sugar / plant oil into another. In 2010 they will show the first production plant, which will be able to produce gasoline at market price. Needless to say this will have a major impact on markets, especially when we start to run out of oil in the world. But this is only half of the story. Because if you can control the process of converting one type of sugar / oil into another then there is a good chance that you will also be able to convert other types. Think chemical plant food production. Maybe some day soon we will be able to produce artificial produced milk and we will not need all the methane farting cows any more… or we will not need expensive raw materials for beer or vine, but can convert something a lot less expensive..

6.)

See my blog post from yesterday.

Denmark would be the perfect country for testing such an automated job offering system. On average our freelancer pay is 10 times higher than the average price for the same quality of work on Freelancer.com. Thus there are room for error in the beginning.

I need your feedback, please give feedback, let's discuss.....