5th Business Forum Greece-Sweden ”Digitalisation: the future for Greece” took place Tuesday March 19 at the prestigious Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens.
The business forum was a co-project between the Swedish Embassy in Athens and the Hellenic-Swedish Chamber of Commerce. Speakers from both Sweden and Greece talked about the challenges and possibilities we have ahead of us in the fourth industrial revolution. Several Swedish companies were represented at the forum as well as the EU Commission, SEV-Hellenic Federation of Enterprises, Greek think tanks, entrepreneurs and researchers.
The opening speech was held by the Swedish minister for Rural Affairs, Jennie Nilsson, that spoke about the ongoing digital transformation in Sweden and the need to have an extensive digital infrastructure in both urban and rural areas. She addressed the governments digital strategy and the goal that 95 % of all households and companies should have high speed broadband by year 2020.
Another speaker from Sweden was Christian Magnusson, Director at the National Agency for Education that spoke about the importance of education in digital competence and everyone’s right to participate in the digital society, regardless of socio economic background. By offering education in programming and computer science in school, we prevent democracy deficits by strengthening democratic rights.
We also had another very special guest, the robot Goliath, developed by Fredrik Löfgren at Linköping University in Sweden. Fredrik presented his research, showed examples of application areas and showed us what the future might bring in the robotics area.
