Denmark is a force of global good

On Friday, we celebrated the launch of the forth Small Great Nation report at an event in Deloitte. Among our guest speakers was Tony Blair’s former adviser, author and communicator Alastair Campbell alongside Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen, Deputy Secretary-General of OECD. Both gave their perspective on Denmark in an international world. The message was clear: Denmark is a force of global good and to cite Mr. Campbell: In this era of disbelief, Denmark has to stand up for your values that make you punch above your weight.

Needless to say, Denmark has potential and is being recognized in the world – despite our size. And we are being recognized for our welfare state, our equal society and our strongholds. But we need to be careful – because we are also experiencing increasing polarization, and if we continue to live as today, we will have a big deficit in the state finances 20 years from now.

As a nation we also need to make ourselves accountable for delivering on the SDG’s. We are well positioned, but we can do more to leverage our leading position within renewables, greentech, cleantech, pharma, transportation, etc. If we continue to collaborate across private and public sector, pension funds and organisations, we can continue to make a significant impact and help shape the society in the right direction.  

A fact-based discussion about Denmark’s future

Two years ago, we laid out an ambition to bring facts into an emotional discussion in the media; to shed light on the real issues and potential our country holds; and to take greater responsibility of our country’s future. So, we created Small Great Nation as a joint initiative by Deloitte and think tank Kraka to outline Denmark’s challenges and opportunities and facilitate a dialogue across businesses, the public sector, and organisations, engaging people to discuss and co-create on better solutions for bringing Denmark forward – and for including everyone on the journey.

We have now released four reports on Danish strongholds, social cohesion, harvesting the high-hanging fruits and the welfare state towards 2040. We have engaged ministers, CEOs, NGO’s and entrepreneurs in the discussion. Videos, social media, a podcast series, press activities, and events across the country are among the channels we have used to communicate facts and promote the discussion.

Recommendations for our joint future

With the four reports, we round off the first chapter of the Small Great Nation ambition with a selection of recommendations based on the most significant topics. The recommendations are tested in the many debates and in our Small great nation Sounding Board. They fall into four categories that have been at the center of the discussion across all reports: Cohesion, Growth, Education and Labour.

We will bring these recommendations to the politicians and the people. We will use them to continue the debate about how businesses, politicians, NGOs and organisations can bring our country forward – together.

Let’s hear it from the next generation – our future leaders

The response and impact have been extraordinary. That is why we have decided to continue the initiative for another two years with new analyses, events and podcasts in the pipeline. In the next phase of Small Great Nation, we will focus on the SDGs as they hold great potential for Denmark’s future growth, and we want to invite the young generation to create a vision for Denmark – in all fairness, it is their future we are talking about! I believe that doing well by doing good is a win win, and as a business we need leverage our core capabilities to contribute. To me, that is living our purpose - getting the sense-making into our daily business and engage everyone in building sustainable growth.