Out of the Shadows, a Tech Hub in Luxembourg

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Out of the Shadows, a Tech Hub in Luxembourg

A well researched and documented feature story in today's New York Times. The story of Luxembourg's effort to diversify into high technologies.

It is not easy to move out of comfortable routines, and the article shows the obstacles that had to be overcome: there was no university until 2003, start-uppers are young and Luxembourg's natives are grey civil servants or blue grey bankers, all solidly paid. That's poison for the spirit of enterprise. 

It is remarkable how Luxembourg's incursion into high technologies outside steel evolved, a narration of which however is not in the article. The Big Bang was actually a small bang, when the precursor of Technoport Luxembourg, Centre Henri Tudor was born in the 1980ies. Under the unshakable confidence of Claude Wehenkel and a supportive Board, Henri Tudor managed to overcome the many hurdles from the grey and blue-grey doubters and critics. I guess that some of those critics will be very prominent, the day when the inaugural ribbon cutting at the new building occurs.

But looking forward, and thanks to important financial incentives, young companies are blooming, and some impressive success stories made their way out of Technoport or other incubating facilities. For the successful will be doubly rewarded: their success will be compounded by a generous tax code that leaves 80% of revenue based on IP tax exempt.

And this is important too, for those in charge of spending tax payer money wisely, and pondering a branding campaign for Luxembourg: there is no ad as effective as a good, positive feature story about Luxembourg in the New York Times.