I recently started paying attention to the VR ecosystem in Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark and would like to share some opinions on the possible opportunities that may exist in this space. My knowledge is limited but the possibilities are not :). Please feel free to share with me if you know more opportunities in this space.

Norway

We have seen that the real estate sector / proptech is a booming sector in the Oslo region. A while ago spacemaker got acquired by Autodesk for a handsome amount. I keep discovering more and more companies in this domain which are using cutting edge tools. Dimension10 was acquired by Varjo last year. Another startup that may evolve to do something cool in this space is Nabla Flow.

Another big promise that VR offers is in the training space. If you visit Varjo´s website. You find a number of companies from Norway which are profiled in the case study section. One of them is in healthcare space, Lærdal. Healthcare could be another big opportunity in Norway in terms of technology adoption and validation.

Sweden

I remember visiting the Surgical Sciences office in Gothenburg in 2019. They had a solid use-case for improving the clinician skill in doing surgery. The equipment however they used was not of the same fidelity and experience what we have available today. I am sure Surgical Sciences must be working on it as we speak to use the most cutting edge hardware to simulate the surgery experiences that one can train for. Healthcare is definitely a strength area in Sweden with lot of cutting edge research happening in Stockholm, Uppsala and elsewhere.

Life Sciences is another industry where AI is getting a lot of traction these days after the protein folding breakthroughs in 2020. AstraZeneca is one of the leading players here. As per Alexander Schumacher they are second in the list in terms of publications in his study of Pharma companies. Maybe VR can help in Drug Design with human and AI efforts combined.

Denmark

In my last post you can read about the discussion we had with Serge in VR and the ideas it gave me. Serge is heading the pioneer centre in Denmark. One of the topic Serge focuses on is XR. He believes that in next 5 years most of the AI would be used in AR/VR context. So, maybe Denmark can contribute a lot more with research here.

Having said that Denmark is known for a strong life science sector and industry in general (Universal Robots now an American company) and a strong design sector.

Finland

If you discuss XR topic with anyone from Finland, the first company that comes in discussion is Varjo. I was recently listening to a podcast recorded a year back or so with Varjo founder and already discovered their Norwegian acquisition of Dimension10. Finland has strong environments in tech industry, gaming and also life sciences and healthcare. With Varjo and other Gaming environments contributing, I guess Finnish side can contribute most in the headset and platforms for hosting cool VR applications.

So what could be the Nordic collaborations look like?

We already see with Finland + Norway example, Varjo acquiring Dimension10. My guess is that we can dozens of such combinations coming up in near future.

• Could Autostore from Norway acquire a VR company to train their robots better for warehouse usage?
• Maybe Volvo is already using VR to design next generation cars.
• Could AstraZeneca or NovoNordisk use human experts in VR space to do better drug design?
• Could Surgical Sciences or Lærdal offer medical students improved and (cheaper) and immersive training in different parts of the world
• Could the Oil and Gas Industry in Norway use XR to improve safety in the operations?
• Could the Nordic region be a pioneer in adoption of XR in Healthcare space in general? Training of medical students, advance planning of complex surgeries etc.

Maybe you have more ideas than me….. keep them coming!