It’s incredible how far innovation has reached in Iceland in recent years.

Now we have innovation officers at big companies, startup accelerators, clusters, research parks, labs, and so forth.

Some of the benefits of doing innovation in Iceland:

• Global mindset from the start since it’s too small of a market for most new ventures.

• Gender diversity in the space in general (we can always do better though)

• “Þetta reddast” attitude, meaning it will always work out somehow.

• Short connection lines between people in startups, companies, and government. You can literally call our president (as nicely said by Andri Heiðar Kristinsson)

• Government and other types of support to create a thriving and striving startup ecosystem in multitude of industries.

• Closeness to natural resources, making it a good ground for sustainability research.

There are challenges too, like attracting and retaining talented people from abroad, but we’ve made some progress already.

Hats off to the organizers for creating a vibrant conference that boozts the community in big ways.