• Your Royal Highnesses, dear Chambers of Commerce in Sweden and France, honored guests.

• My name is Alexander Husebye and I am CEO of the Centre for Business History in Stockholm. We preserve and present business history, on assignment from individual companies and also from the Swedish business sector at large.

• Today, I have the pleasure to tell you an astounding story about Sweden’s industrial development, right around 1915, at the time when the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in France was founded.

• It is a story about a country where the idea of free trade gains full traction, where entrepreneurs take the chance that open borders offers, where innovations line up and an atmosphere of openness to change rule. All important aspects of growth – that I would like to believe Sweden has today as well.

Alexander Husebye@ French-Swedish Business Forum, Stockholm14 Sep 2015

• So let us open the story box and look back to that particular year, 1915. The old world is about to be buried by the Great War. What kind of Sweden is it that we meet? Well, to put a modern label on an historical economy, Sweden was a “tiger economy”. In fifty years the BNP had grown with an average rate of 11 percent. We were in the midst of a transformational journey that other countries have done since and some are doing today in Asia and Africa.

In the midst of a transformational journey

• Sweden went from being a backwards agrarian country in the 1850s to a developed industrial nation by the first decades of the 1900s. We had companies at the cutting-edge of the technologies of the time.

• A number of factors helped to shape this development: we had natural resources in abundance; smart engineers like Gustaf Dalén on this picture who studied at home and abroad; and entrepreneurs who came from nowhere, turning their ideas into reality and by example showing that social mobility was more achievable than ever before. And Sweden had – not the least - forward-looking politicians who worked closely with business.

Gustaf Dalén

Modest circumstances. Engineer. Founder of AGA. Nobel Prize Laureate 1912 (Physics).

• Among these contributing factors, there is one event that stands out. And it is an event that actually got its inspiration from France.

• I am talking about the almost revolutionary idea that that took its formal shape on a sunny afternoon, on Saturday 18 June 1864 at the Royal Palace here in Stockholm. In the presence of His Majesty, King Carl XV, this crucial piece of legislation that you see on this picture was formally adopted.

What you see here is the legislation for Expanded Freedom of Enterprise. It states that “every Swedish man or woman can start and run their own companies within the Kingdom of Sweden”.

• In Swedish, the language is official, almost solemn – and it accelerated the development of Swedish society in a way that is quite unique in the global economy of its time.

• Behind this reform was one of Sweden’s greatest statesmen – ever! You see him on this slide: may I present Minister of Finance, Johan August Gripenstedt. He devoted his political career to modernizing Sweden, to making the country an international force to be reckoned with. He saw that Sweden could be so much more than just a farming country and exporter of raw materials. In the government led by Louis de Geer, Gripenstedt pushed through many unprecedented reforms for promoting enterprising and entrepreneurship. He was often at odds with both the nobility and the peasant class – but more often than not had the backing of an understanding monarchy.

Johan August Gripenstedt

• Gripenstedt was a Francophile. His thinking was, since early on, inspired by Frederic Bastiat, the French liberal politician and free-trade-prophet. Gripenstedt first came into close contact with Bastiat’s writings during a grand voyage through France and to Paris. Bastiat, himself from a family of prominent winery businessmen, fought for free trade and free movement of goods and people, opposing mercantilism and meddling governments.

• This legacy from Bastiat and Gripenstedt is worth considering today when our nations find themselves, once again, discussing freedom or limitations on trade, this time in the context of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP. The political discourse of today, both in Sweden and in France, reminds us all about the friction between regulation and free trade that was present already 150 years ago…

”By virtue of exchange, one man’s prosperity is beneficial to all others” Frédéric Bastiat

Although right and left wing politicians joined forces in opposing the free trade movement, it also had many proponents in Sweden. The media landscape was undergoing large transformations at the end of the 19th century – incidentally another similarity to today – and books and newspapers were spread wider and faster than ever before. The new mass media gave room to important free trade voices, such as Emilia Flygare Carlén and Wendela Hebbe, who were given space by publishers such as Lars Johan Hierta, the founder of the daily newspaper Aftonbladet. A forerunner, you could say, to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos of today.

• Now, for a small country that opens its borders for free trade, the opportunity is also there to allow yourself to be… shall we say, heavily influenced by others. Shameless information gathering and copying was part of the global economy, and Swedes copied like the best of them.

• For instance, delegations of Swedish scientists, engineers and business men traveled in hordes to world exhibitions to gather both inspiration and information.

• However, in 1897, the Swedish delegations didn’t have to travel far, since the world came to them. The General Art and Industrial Exposition of Stockholm was a highlight on our home turf.

The Stockholm Exposition, 1897

• It also gave Swedish business and society a chance to show off Swedish companies and products. It is worth remembering that Stockholm in 1897 was the world’s most telephone-connected city; and the exhibition was the first where you could even call to and from certain booths.

• Now at another fair, eight years earlier, the famous Paris World Fair of 1889, Swedes had already played a – let’s call it – fundamental role, since…

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• …the Eiffel Tower was kept together by bolts manufactured at Borgviks Bruk in Värmland, the heart of Sweden. It’s a rather odd trivia – but I would like to think it depended on Swedish quality and delivery precision.

• In fact, it seems that Swedish engineering towards the end of the 19th century, was such an established concept in France that it made its way even into the popular fiction. Did you know that…

Bolts from Borgsviks brukBolts from Borgsviks bruk

• …Jules Verne equipped Captain Nemo’s submarine Nautilus with an engine from Swedish Motala Verkstad, in the novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (or Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) from 1870.

• Now, Captain Nemo may have been a fictitious French entrepreneur who used Swedish innovations – but the very same Motala Verkstad also built 57 of the world’s first oil tankers and delivered them to the Caspian Sea and...

Engine from Motala Verkstad

• …to one of the more unknown companies where Swedish know-how was at the forefront of technology. I am talking about the family Nobel. Together with his brothers Robert and Ludwig, Alfred Nobel owned the oil company Branobel. Branobel was based in St Petersburg, the first large international market for Swedish enterprises. Exploration of oil in the Caspian Sea made the Branobel company as large as Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. The Nobel conglomerate also had its French connection, since its financing partly came from Paris and the banking family Rothschild.

58 of the worlds first oil tankers were built in – Motala!

• Alfred himself kept homes in many countries, and he established his own facilities in France already in 1871, both in and outside of Paris, where he also as a young ambitious man had worked in the laboratory of professor Peleuse.

• Paris remained his main residence almost all the way until his death and, as we all know, his famous testament was written and signed in Paris, at the Swedish Club.

A Swedish engineer in Sevran

• But let us return to the tiger economy of Sweden.• We have seen that the development from the freedom of

enterprise legislation in 1864 to the year of 1915 in many ways were the founding years for Sweden as a modern industrialized country.

• What really makes you jump, though, when you look at the development, is the pace, where so much was achieved in only 50 years. Most of the large Swedish companies that we know to this day – you see some of them here – were founded during this period and quickly developed to become international, yes global, actors.

• Underpinning all this was free trade. There was a wide open world market that never before had been more welcoming to cross-border trade and labor exchange. In these days of border discussions, it is worth remembering that passports were not even required then to pass borders. That of course changed when World War I broke out…

• In hindsight, it is clear this was the most free trade friendly period the world had seen. So far.

From startups to global players in just a few decades..

Lars Magnus & Hilda EricssonFor daring entrepreneurs, the opportunities of these times were almost unlimited. Yes, credit should be given to statesmen and dignitaries, but what development really needs is entrepreneurs, individuals of flesh and blood, who will not stop until they’ve seen their ideas realized. Here you see two of them. They are one of the true power couples of Swedish business: Lars Magnus and Hilda Ericsson.Only a stone’s throw away from where we are today, they started a small company that bears their name to this day. Back then, though, it was a company whose finances the couple could keep track of in this little ledger. In it they each evening wrote down wages and business accounts by hand.While Lars Magnus traveled the world and struck deals, Hilda kept the organization running at home in Stockholm, and was practically speaking the company’s Chief Operating Officer, if not Chief Executive Officer. Except for officially, of course.

• I like to say that Lars Magnus and Hilda ran Ericsson according to the principle of MBLL or Management by Love Letters. Here’s one such love letter, from Lars Magnus. We find him preparing for the Paris-exhibition of 1900. He writes about all the work there is to do, that there’s been a fire in the basement and that dust covers Ericsson’s exhibition booth – but he is also self-confident, almost celebratory since he finds the American and German competitors at the fair less than impressive. Well, history gave him right and Ericsson became – and still is – a global forerunner in its field.

Love letters from Paris

• So from its early days just next door to here, the L M Ericsson and Company had by 1915 reached a position where it was a globally operating corporation with activities on all continents.

• Ericsson was of course present in France too, since the early 1900s. Its French subsidiary, Société Francaise des Téléphones Ericsson (STE) was established in 1911, and the following year, the company's plant was completed in Colombes, a Paris suburb.

• And the French path that Ericsson paved was followed by many other Swedish companies. Alfa Laval, who sold products that revolutionized milk production, began operations in Courbevoie in the 1920s. AGA who delivered light houses soon thereafter. And later on Atlas Copco, whose pneumatic drills came in handy for the tunnel system that links Paris with neighboring Neuilly, Etoile and La Défense. In more recent times, retailers such as IKEA and H&M have built large businesses in France.

• We have seen that in 1915, when the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in France was founded, Sweden had built a solid position in the world economy. As a nation, we had – irrevocably – signed up for a development that demands openness, curiosity and adaption.

• Just look at this image which shows how one company during 100 years took its path into a global market.

• There is in other words no looking back, no room for nostalgia. As the world spins, we will continue to spin with it. And I am happy to note that also today; our companies are there, at the forefront, even in a global web environment where you have to be international from day one. In many ways, this is still in the spirit of Gripenstedts rendering of Bastiat’s ideas of borderless trade and services, and how it has become the dominant way of policy making in so many countries.

No way back…

• All this makes me curious. I wonder what my successor will say, in another hundred years, when he or she reflects about the newcomers of today? Who is still there from Spotify, Klarna or Mojang. Or Deezer, Dailymotion, Vente-Privée or BlaBlaCar?

• And will it be able to say then too, that we, as countries, continued to benefit from free trade, thriving in the knowledge that change shouldn’t be feared but embraced as the seed for success? Let us all also hope that the countries that are just joining the free trade arena will stick to this belief over the hundred years to come.

In another 100 years?

• Well, the only thing I myself as an historian knows, is that history never ends. It has only just begun – and therefore let us greet the future with a message from Gustaf Dalén, who we encountered earlier in this presentation. He wore this pin on his sleeve: “Var optimist”, “be an optimist”. It is without a doubt an exciting and inspiring development we’ve seen in the past hundred years – and that we all look forward to meeting in the next one hundred.

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• Again, my thanks to the organizers for allowing me to share our story. Thank you all for your time. I look forward to continuing our discussions here at the conference – and over the many years to come.

Alexander Husebye, CEO and Presidentalexander.husebye@naringslivshistoria.sewww.naringslivshistoria.se