Finland's most connected companies

How are the decision makers of listed companies in Finland connected? Using R for collecting decision maker data and D3 for visualizing the results, I have created this network chart (sorry for the ugly iframe):


Connections are the number of connections to other boards from one company to other. KONE's board members are for instance on 13 other boards. The most connected companies on Helsinki's stock exchange are Kone, Sponda and Teleste.

Company	Connections
KONE Oyj	13
Sponda Oyj	12
Teleste Oyj	10
Outotec Oyj	10
Cargotec Oyj	10

The data has been filtered out so that only companies with at least one connection to another company are included. The data is collected from finder.fi and includes the company's management, board members, and other people with the right to sign for the company.

Network chart of board members in Helsinki

The data is scraped from the Finnish business directory finder.fi. The network chart is created using D3.js.

Part 2 in our mini documentary on Helsinki as a future startup hub asks two important questions. Can Helsinki be it, and what pieces are missing for Helsinki to become a startup hub?

We get to hear Alexander Stubb talk about the work being done from the government to support this ambition. Scott Sage from DFJ Esprit says Helsinki is one of the undiscovered gems in the tech industry.

The attitude and mentality of people are both important parts of a startup hub, says minister Stubb, infrastructure is also important. Aaron Patzer highlights the heritage from Linux, Nokia and MySQL. Peter Vesterbacka from Rovio says we are on the right track.

In part 1, we hear the visiting founders presenting themselves. We also hear that Aalto Entrepreneurship Society has some ambitious goals for Finland in the future.

Our latest video, the kick network

I'm working on video blog about startups, cool technology and entrepreneurs in Finland. In May we got the opportunity to follow Pauli Bragiel, Aaron Patzer, Russel Simmons and Sami Inkinen around as they visited Helsinki for the event Founders' Week.

This is part one from the video series we are creating, "We want to see Finland become a global Startup hub".