The Marcus Wallenberg Prize, 28 September
Your majesties,
Your excellences,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
There is one thing that politicians and industrialists have in common, namely that we are often accused of constant short-term thinking. Politicians are said to plan only as far as the next election – and business leaders are even worse: they don’t think beyond the next quarterly report.
Although there may be some truth in this criticism, it is nonetheless a gross exaggeration. At least one thing is for sure: there can hardly be a business sector – or for that matter, any human activity at all – that has to think more long-term than the forestry industry.
What is planted today will yield a return only many years from now – and what we are harvesting today has been nurtured for many decades.
The enterprise that has given rise to the fine award we are celebrating today is considered to be the world’s oldest limited company. It dates back to at least 1288 when a Swedish bishop bought back a share in the company – and it is of course an irony of fate that the first known stock trader in Sweden was a bishop.
Naturally, the forestry industry is dependent on research that can provide support and guidance for the long-term decisions that must be taken. It is therefore no coincidence that the person to take the initiative for the first real Swedish forestry research was a forestry entrepreneur, namely Frans Kempe in Modo.
Personally, it is also interesting, I think, that a former leader of my party and Nobel Laureate in Economics, Bertil Ohlin, made his first important scholarly contribution on the topic of optimal forest rotation periods.
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The Marcus Wallenberg Prize was established to honour one of the great names in Swedish business: Marcus Wallenberg.
Even if he cannot be said to have been the research kind, his interest in research was indisputable.
For 25 years he led what is known today as the Research Institute of Industrial Economics, making an important contribution to bridging the gap between academia and business.
It happened now and then that researchers at the Institute drew conclusions that did not square with what some entrepreneurs thought was appropriate. But when some board members proposed that these reports should be stopped, Wallenberg rejected this outright and recommended instead that those who wanted to censor the research resign from the board.
Certainly it happens among politicians too; we can feel annoyed at times when researchers come up with results that do not concur with what we think and believe. But research that is not completely free from outside influence is not research at all.
As a politician with a research background of my own, I would like to thank the Wallenberg Foundation for its contribution to research, and for your efforts to bring academia and business together. The Government and I believe that precisely this kind of cooperation is one of the greatest political challenges. We talk about the ‘the knowledge triangle’, bringing education, research and innovation together – an issue we are giving priority to during the Swedish Presidency of the EU. It is crucial for the future that the substantial resources we invest in research also lead to innovation and growth.
And to all the researchers in this room, I also hope that you will produce many research results in the future that will turn some of my preconceptions – and ¬I expect some of yours too – on their head.
Finally, I would like to congratulate the prize winners and express special thanks to the Wallenberg Foundation, both for the contributions it has made to research in general and for this ceremony here today.