OREANDA-NEWS. September 19, 2011. “The choice facing Estonia in the coming years, and the coming decades, is whether it wants to become and remain one of the world’s most innovative economies, manufacturing innovative end-products, or make do with the role of subcontractor, contributing to little more than primarily cheap labour and transit opportunities,” said President Toomas Hendrik Ilves today at the Estonia Concert Hall at the official awards ceremony for the annual business competition organised by Enterprise Estonia in association with the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Estonian Employers Federation.

“Unless we adopt an innovative attitude that is based on good education and focus on inventive, flexible solutions, Estonia will have no hope of playing in the premier league in future competition in terms of added value,” he cautioned.

The president said that although lingering insecurity on financial markets and uncertainty in Europe were making it harder to forecast the way events would unfold, Estonia had a lot working in its favour to come out on top.

“Take the recent Seedcamp Week in London, for example,” he said, “where they put together the latest ranking of start-up companies in order to attract investors. Four of the companies that made the top twenty were Estonian – and two of them made the top three.”

President Ilves closed his speech by wishing the award winners and all of Estonia’s entrepreneurs “no end of ideas, because they are what the future of our economy will depend on ten, twenty, a hundred years down the line.”