Social innovations from Finland

A while back, our ex-neighbor gave us an interesting book called “100 Social Innovations from Finland“, which catalogs some of the social innovations that Finland has made. At first it sounds like a pretty self-righteous book but it’s actually quite interesting – at least after you realize and accept the fact that many topics covered are not, in fact, originally from Finland and many are not innovations at all. In short, it’s a good read though probably not for the reasons the authors envisioned.

Each of the 108 topics gets two pages, written by numerous semi-well-known Finns. The topics are incredibly wide-ranging. Some of them actually deal with genuine innovations from Finland – like Linux, SMS and Xylitol. Xylitol for one is very good stuff in terms of dental health so one would hope it gained wider global acceptance as a sweetener. Some, on the other hand, more describe the society than any innovation therein – topics like Sámi people, NGO proliferation, ice fishing, ice swimming and bilingualism would go into this category.

Some topics are just weird, like “Eroticism in everyday life”. Qué? In Finland? Luckily there are some everyday topics that are rather honestly seen as having a significant cultural impact, like Salmiakki Koskenkorva (from all foreigners’ point of view, interestingly flavored vodka), mämmi and HK Blue Sausage (both food products that, by many accounts, should not be classified as such) as well as Liquorice.

Then there are some topics that must have required some quite creative thinking in order to put a positive spin on them. For example, it is presented in unquestionably positive light that the amount of psychiatric hospital beds was reduced by 51% in just ten years along with increases in outpatient care. I don’t know about you, but I think there are far, far too many patients in outpatient “care” than is good for the country.

Given the messy nature and wide variety of the topics, what is the book good for? Well it’s an interesting collection of stuff about Finland – I myself found it informative, amusing, appalling and interesting. For foreigners the book provides a nice window into the Finnish society, or at least the official truth of it, as a lot of the basic features making up the fabric of the society are discussed. I’m sure it also includes some new tidbits of information for most Finns as well. On the other hand, it does contain some pretty self-righteous material, some of which is funny and some much less so. While you need to take it with a grain or two of salt, it’s worth flipping through.