New, extensive survey on the Icelandic innovation ecosystem published by Northstack, Technology Development Fund, and Gallup

Today, we published the results of a extensive survey on the state of the Icelandic Innovation Ecosystem. The survey was done in collaboration with the Technology Development Fund and Gallup, and was sent to 753 companies in Iceland focused on innovation.

“This is the first survey of its kind on this topic, at least to my knowledge,” says Kristinn Árni L. Hróbjartsson, founder of Northstack. “The goal is to create a baseline, which can be used to build on and keep track of the development of people’s opinion on the Icelandic ecosystem. Therefore, I hope the survey will be regularly repeated,” Kristinn Árni L. Hróbjartsson comments.

Results

The results of the survey show that in whole, respondents are positive about the future of innovation in Iceland (75.8%) and think that the public in Iceland is generally positive about innovation (75.7%).

However, few agree to the statement that Iceland is a good place for fast growing companies (18.2% agreed) or that it’s a good place for international startups (18.9% agreed).

Knowledge of various incentives was lower than many expect. 51.2% of people asked did not know that foreign experts can get a tax deduction and 22.8% did not know about the R&D tax incentives, that have been a major initiative by the Icelandic government in recent years.

On the topic that people often skip over, the results showed that 73.5% of the people asked think the Icelandic krona negatively affects startups.

Here are the slides presenting the main results, introduced at the meeting today. Also, the results have been made public and are available, with further information about the survey (in Icelandic), here.