Finland and the mobile phone industry: A case study of the return on investment from government-funded research and development

The sudden and dramatic growth of the mobile phone manufacturing sector in Finland is an interesting case study for science and technology (S&T) policy analysts. Mostly on account of the rapidity of this growth against a relatively static situation for the other sub-sectors, the Finnish economic data over the period 1990–2001 can be used without ambiguity to quantify the return of an initial public sector research and development (R&D) expenditure on the growth of a sectoral economy. Although it is apparent from the data that this economic success story is to some extent now running out of steam, the returns to date for all the participants have been astonishing. Using the Patterson–Hartmann model, which has been developed to link company-level R&D expenditure with product revenue, it is shown that government has managed to achieve a multiplier effect of about 66 on its initial R&D expenditure through initially a leveraging of business R&D expenditure (at a level of 1:3) and then the translation of the latter into an increase in gross domestic product (GDP) (at a level of 1:22). These figures are extraordinarily high, even in comparison to the multipliers obtained by large private sector companies.The keys to the success were both the vision and foresight of the Finnish R&D community, who identified cell phones as a major growth opportunity, the sharing of risk by the various role players (government, universities and industry) as can happen in an efficient national system of innovation, and finally a sustained commitment to R&D by the industry leaders. The latter has now reached a level of 3.5% of GDP (2005), which makes Finland a global leader in R&D expenditure (as a percentage of GDP). The lessons for developing countries such as South Africa, which are moving towards higher levels of R&D expenditure but within a resource constrained context, are apparent.