Innovation Driven FDI
If you work in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Economic Development, or with Public Policy, you know how difficult it is to attract foreign companies to establish in your region.
Competition between economic hubs is fierce, each one trying to outsmart the other with bigger tax incentives, longer exempt periods, better employee education packages, lower wages, decreased red tape, favorable zoning, cheaper energy, etc. If these are the only tools in your FDI portfolio, you have joined a long rank of Investment Promotion Agencies that race each other to the bottom.
Equally, if your only strategy is to create manufacturing or service jobs, you may be serving sunset industries. As robots and AI will start replacing these jobs, you will want to make sure the companies and people who create and operate those robots and those AI tools are with you.
Be smart, and create your FDI strategy and action plan around innovation. Take back control of your future.
Start by enrolling to this online course, hosted by an award winning innovator, FDI professional and FDI educator, and an author of an Amazon Top Three Hot New Release nonfiction book about governments' role in innovation.
Why take this course?
As a professional in your field, you are sometimes given tasks that seem impossible to achieve. You may be just entering the world of FDI and looking to adopt proven best practices, or you could be an accomplished professional who wants to stay current in the fast changing economic development environment.
This course is born from Petra Soderling's personal experience with Invest in Finland. For four years she was stationed in the U.S. and tasked to raise investment from North America to Finland in the area of information and communications technologies (ICT). Starting from zero, overcoming Covid-19 and Russia's attack to Ukraine, she succeeded in creating a strategy for herself that allowed her to help those American companies who genuinely were interested in what Finland had to offer.
The course is also based on research and interviews Petra Soderling made for her book Government and Innovation - the Economic Developer's Guide to our Future. The book is filled with science and data points on how governments can boost emerging technologies to their economical advantage. The book is also packed with examples from countries who have successfully implemented these strategies.
Petra Soderling is a regular speaker on Innovation Driven FDI Strategies at the Advanced FDI Leadership Programme with the Moller Institute, Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
What is included in the course?
7 modules with 36 individual lessons equivalent of 32 pages of written text.
A 28 page workbook.
3 Videos explaining Innovation Tools, and 5 audio files for case studies.
4 quizes.
One complimentary 40 minute Zoom session with your Instructor ($500 value).
Certificate of Compliance.
Estimated time to complete the course is 6-8 hours of intensive work. You can divide this over days and weeks as works best with your schedule.
After the course: A continued community of colleagues sharing best practices, newsletters, videos, podcasts and more.
What is my takeaway?
Transformation
After completing the course you will be a Foreign Direct Investment professional who can analyze innovation potential in your region, inspire and drive local innovation ecosystems, and package this in a way that is attractive to international companies seeking to expand their R&D operations.
This transformation serves your current position in your current organization, but it will also give you more career development options going forward.
Strategy Document
By completing your workbook after each lesson, you will have a 28 page rough draft for your region's Innovation Driven FDI Strategy.
You can polish this draft into a presentable strategy yourself, or you can opt to use Petra Soderling's services again. You can also work with her in the future for creating an Action Plan around your strategy, and coach your entire team on how to take this approach on to customers in the field.
Welcome to the new and improved FDI professional that's you.
Continuous support
Whether you take the course independently or with your colleagues, you will have access to an extended group of people who are going through the same challenges as you are. Grow with us, join us, and benefit from the stories, best practices, videos, newsletters, and podcasts that we put out weekly.
Curriculum
Your instructor
Petra Soderling is a Finnish American award winning innovator, strategist, and thought leader in the area of economic development and innovation. She built her technology career in the private sector, holding executive positions at Nokia in Helsinki, London, and Palo Alto, and as Founder and CEO of two successful startups in New York City and New Orleans, LA.
Between 2018 and 2022 Ms. Soderling worked for Business Finland, the Finnish governments innovation funding agency. Stationed in USA, her role was to drive Foreign Direct Investments from North America to Finland. She specialized in packaging and marketing Finland’s emerging technology know-how and capabilities as a driver for FDI, and creating innovation ecosystems between Finland and selected US states.
In 2022 Petra Soderling created her own agency Petra Soderling & Co. Through the agency, she is an advisor with the World Bank and the European Investment Bank on development, application and financing of deep technologies. She also serves as the Head of Government and Consortium Relations at the Quantum Strategy Institute, an international think tank promoting end user adoption of quantum technologies, and represents Finland in the joint technical committee for quantum technologies by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Petra Soderling holds an MBA from Helsinki University of Technology, and received Executive Education on Innovation Management from Stanford University, and on Strategic Finance from Harvard Business School. Her book Government and Innovation - the Economic Developer's Guide came out in 2023 and was listed in the top three Hot New Releases by Amazon’s editorial board.
Ms. Soderling resides in the south of France, where she shares her life with her winemaker husband and their two beloved rescue dogs. She also divides her time between Luxembourg and Washington, D.C.