The recent acqui­si­tion of King, the devel­op­ers behind Can­dy Crush Saga, by Activi­sion Bliz­zard for $5.9 bil­lion was the lat­est in a long line of high pro­file acqui­si­tions of star­tups found­ed in Swe­den. Swedish tech start­up com­pa­nies such as Skype, Spo­ti­fy, and Mojang, seem to have an abil­i­ty to achieve glob­al suc­cess. What qual­i­ties allow them to do this and how does it tie into Swedish cul­ture?

Lon­don isn’t the tech-cap­i­tal of Europe. Sur­prised? Accord­ing to Atom­i­co, a VC firm which invests in tech­nol­o­gy star­tups all over the world, “on a per capi­ta basis, Stock­holm is the sec­ond most pro­lif­ic tech hub glob­al­ly, with 6.3 bil­lion-dol­lar com­pa­nies per mil­lion peo­ple (com­pared to [Sil­i­con] Val­ley with 6.9).”

Despite hav­ing a thriv­ing East Lon­don dig­i­tal start­up com­mu­ni­ty, Lon­don has just three dig­i­tal com­pa­nies in the plus $1 bil­lion cat­e­go­ry.

The recent acqui­si­tion of King Dig­i­tal Enter­tain­ment, the mak­ers of Can­dy Crush Saga, by Activi­sion Bliz­zard for $5.9 bil­lion was anoth­er in a long line of high pro­file acqui­si­tions of star­tups found­ed in Swe­den.

Swe­den was home to the likes of Skype (bought by Microsoft for $8.5 bil­lion in their largest ever acqui­si­tion), Spo­ti­fy (who ear­li­er this year received a mon­ster $526 mil­lion fund­ing round), and Minecraft cre­ators Mojang (also sub­ject to a major $2.5 bil­lion Microsoft acqui­si­tion ear­li­er this year), all of whom exist with King in a group of elite Swedish tech com­pa­nies that have man­aged to achieve glob­al suc­cess.

All of these brands share one incred­i­ble trait: the abil­i­ty to appeal to glob­al audi­ences, expand rapid­ly across ter­ri­to­ries, and reach new mar­kets all across the world.

Arguably, it’s a trait that Swedish busi­ness­es have always pos­sessed; brands such as Ikea and Vol­vo have man­aged to glob­al­ize while main­tain­ing a unique, decid­ed­ly Swedish brand iden­ti­ty.

IKEA cel­e­brate a dis­tinct Swedish iden­ti­ty through­out their stores around the world.

Ikea’s unique blend of min­i­mal­ist func­tion­al­i­ty, inno­va­tion, and sim­plic­i­ty of design have been large­ly admired yet lit­tle emu­lat­ed, and Vol­vo have nur­tured a rep­u­ta­tion for safe­ty and stead­fast­ness, which has made them a pop­u­lar brand in emerg­ing mar­kets such as the bur­geon­ing mid­dle-class in Chi­na (the auto man­u­fac­tur­er was brought under Chi­nese own­er­ship in 2010).

For a sin­gle coun­try in Europe to pro­duce dig­i­tal prop­er­ties that rival the giants of Sil­i­con Val­ley is remark­able. So what is it about Swe­den that gives these brands such a glob­al edge?

‘Just The Right Amount’

It’s worth draw­ing a com­par­i­son here, between Swedish tech com­pa­nies, and a long suc­ces­sion of pop­u­lar Swedish pop groups, start­ing with ABBA, who have also man­aged to export their brand well beyond Swedish bor­ders. Swe­den is in fact, the third largest exporter of pop music after the UK and U.S.

In an inter­view with the Nation­al in 2011 Ulf Ekberg of Ace of Base gave his thoughts on what makes Swedish music so uni­ver­sal­ly acces­si­ble:

“For Swe­den [melody is] num­ber one and has always been. While the Amer­i­cans, it’s the lyrics first, pro­duc­tion sec­ond and melody last. I am not say­ing the lyrics are not impor­tant, but for us Swedes, for whom Eng­lish is our sec­ond lan­guage, we just try to make it under­stood by a world audi­ence. Because of this focus on lyrics, some of the Amer­i­can songs are com­pli­cat­ed and can some­times be not much fun. While for us, we always try to reach to as many peo­ple as we can, so we have feel-good melodies and sim­ple lyrics so every­one can have fun.”

At least in Ekberg’s view, the dis­tinct dif­fer­ence between the Swedish and Amer­i­can approach here is in the com­mit­ment, right from the out­set, to cre­ate some­thing that is eas­i­ly acces­si­ble to all.

It is an approach borne per­haps from the Law of Jante, an influ­en­tial set of prin­ci­ples that espous­es col­lec­tive men­tal­i­ty and suc­cess above indi­vid­ual suc­cess­es. Here are the first four of the 10 rules of Jante:

1. You’re not to think you are any­thing spe­cial.
2. You’re not to think you are as good as we are.
3. You’re not to think you are smarter than we are.
4. You’re not to con­vince your­self that you are bet­ter than we are.

The Swedes even have a unique word lagom, which is often trans­lat­ed as “just the right amount,” or some­times “per­fect-sim­ple.” Fol­low­ing this prin­ci­ple in the con­text of tech or busi­ness could eas­i­ly trans­late into an under­stat­ed sense of humil­i­ty, one that cre­ates the inclu­sive men­tal­i­ty that Swedish prod­ucts or brands have become known for.

“Glob­al com­pa­nies based in Swe­den tend to be paint­ed in 50 shades of Jante,” wrote Christo­pher Har­ress in the Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Times, “For exam­ples, Ikea and H&M respec­tive­ly offer sim­ple fur­ni­ture and cloth­ing for ‘the peo­ple’ at cheap prices that remain in line with the ethos of attrac­tive ordi­nar­i­ness.”

Simplicity & Design

Apple’s endur­ing suc­cess has been due, at least in part, to their abil­i­ty to cap­ture the con­cept of sim­plic­i­ty.

“I love it when you can bring real­ly great design and sim­ple capa­bil­i­ty to some­thing that doesn’t cost much,” the late Steve Jobs once said. “It was the orig­i­nal vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.”

If you look at Swedish brands, every­one from long­stand­ing Swedish stal­warts (Ikea and Vol­vo) to the new gen­er­a­tion of tech com­pa­nies (Skype, Spo­ti­fy, Mojang, and King), it’s pos­si­ble to draw a par­al­lel with those same qual­i­ties.

Great design. Sim­ple capa­bil­i­ty. And rea­son­able pric­ing.

It does­n’t take the great­est stretch of the imag­i­na­tion to see how the Swedish cul­tur­al con­cept of lagom encour­ages these qual­i­ties. After all, a key com­po­nent of great design is uni­ver­sal func­tion­al­i­ty (some­thing any­one can use), and sim­plic­i­ty (res­onat­ing with the idea of “just enough” and not over­com­pli­cat­ing a brand’s val­ue), which is as an impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of brands today.

How Can Brands Emulate Swedish Success?

Swe­den has long been viewed as a par­a­digm of social democ­ra­cy. Run­ning through the coun­try’s nation­al con­scious­ness is a col­lec­tive men­tal­i­ty that con­tin­u­ous­ly plays up the virtues of the group.

It’s no coin­ci­dence that many suc­cess­ful Swedish tech exports have been social tools, such as Skype and Spo­ti­fy, and social games such Minecraft and Can­dy Crush Saga.

For brands today the social ele­ment, or a sense of col­lec­tive pur­pose, has become a cru­cial ele­ment of that suc­cess. Of course, there are oth­er impor­tant fac­tors that con­tribute (design, sim­plic­i­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty), but the com­mit­ment to these virtues stems essen­tial­ly from the endem­ic col­lec­tive con­scious­ness that runs through Swedish cul­ture.

At the risk of gen­er­al­iza­tion, the rela­tion­ship between brands and con­sumers is becom­ing more social – and with social net­work­ing plat­forms and user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, so are the inter­ac­tions between con­sumers them­selves.

The suc­cess of Swedish brands glob­al­ly has been due to the fact that their cul­tur­al mind­set aligns to a great extent with the dig­i­tal mind­set, the we rather than the you, and per­haps… if brands want to emu­late that suc­cess, they too need to instill that “we-ness”, a col­lec­tive mind­set that always puts the group before the indi­vid­ual into their orga­ni­za­tions.