"People like to say, don't touch things that work, but Estonians like to look behind the thing and wonder whether there's anything we can change about it. In Estonia you might say, if it works, you can break it". Really amazing !!
"If It Works, You Can Break It" , Cover Story from Forbes.com
>> Since independence in 1991 little Estonia has used a knack for technology and a ravenous appetite for change to make itself a largely wired e-republic.
>> Estonians did much of the software programming and development for the Soviet space program, not to mention the KGB. The Soviets placed one of their most important centers of AI research near the capital city of Tallinn.
>> Internet and mobile phone usage per capita, for instance, is high. Over half of all Estonians now pay for their street parking spaces automatically, using their mobile phones. According to the latest figures 52% of Estonians use the Net regularly.
>> The government runs its Thursday-morning cabinet meetings on computer, and it is close to doing away with paper altogether. Sessions that used to take most of a day now take half an hour as ministers politely tap out their comments instead of grandstanding. Next year the official record of government business will no longer be printed on paper, except for a single copy for the archives. It will exist solely on the Web. "If the Internet was reborn as a country, it would be Estonia," United Nations Development Program administrator Mark Malloch Brown has said.
The article concludes on a note that the reserved nature of Estonian hold them back from promoting their economy and own brand of innovation. Perhaps that's why people so keen to talk about the little country that could. Because it has, in its own small way.
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