Last week the annual employers' conference took place, where both President Alar Karis and Karma Ventures co-founder Margus Uudam voiced a fairly similar idea that runs counter to Estonia's course to date: Estonia should make more concrete choices and select specific areas on which to focus its future competitive advantage.

According to Uudam, this is important because Estonia's economic policy has remained largely the same since the restoration of independence.

"A good business environment, a simple tax policy, a balanced state budget and companies operating as they see fit — this has worked very well for us and I would say these have been very bold and correct choices. At the same time, over the past nearly 20 years I've had the chance to look at technology investments and observe different countries — what technologies they develop, how they motivate them and what choices they make. It seems that quite a few smaller countries bet on certain cards. In other words, a small country with limited resources cannot be very good at everything. The president opened this conference with exactly those words," Uudam explained on the "Esimene stuudio" talk show, referring to the idea presented at the conference.

Uudam said that as a small country Estonia should make choices, since it is not possible to be at the top in every field, meaning some areas inevitably have to be set aside.

"This will probably be interpreted in a very black-and-white way — that we'll start doing this and then stop welcoming tourists, stop doing agriculture and stop producing subcontracted goods or doors and windows. That's far from the case, because all countries have all sectors represented in some form. The question is where special momentum is given," Uudam said.

Although Estonia has attracted attention as a digital success story, Uudam said it should assess which software and solutions will still have value here in a few years' time, given the development of artificial intelligence.

"Our digital success story has mainly been based on e-government and several successes that emerged to some extent by chance. We don't have a sector that systematically produces a certain type of competence through education, followed by a certain type of startup and global company. Skype calls already existed at the time (when Skype was created — ed.), Bolt and Uber existed, Pipedrive — there were hundreds of CRM systems in the world at that time, Veriff — anti-money-laundering solutions existed globally. We've done quite well in different fields, but there has been a certain randomness behind it all and in a sense that has been the starting point of our economic policy so far: we create a good environment and then you do whatever you want," Uudam said.

In Uudam's view, the state and the private sector could jointly choose fields to develop more methodically, though he acknowledged such an approach would likely not appeal to anyone.

"That's the other side of the coin — making those choices is extremely risky and who would want to take that risk? If we select two, three or four sectors where we want to become globally well-known and strong, does that come at someone's expense? Maybe it comes at the expense of the majority, but in the end we as a country still win. It should be seen more like a field where we pay a bit more attention to a fairly fertile garden bed and see whether we can grow a little more there," Uudam explained.

According to the venture capitalist, Estonia is well positioned in several areas where development could be accelerated.

"As an example I would highlight personalized medicine. We have a gene bank and we have digital health records and having those two things together in one country is quite rare. Some people probably also wear smart rings. My ring knows how I've slept, moved and what my stress levels have been over the past eight years, but it knows nothing about my genes and nothing about my digital health record. My family doctor and the digital health record, however, know nothing about what's in this ring or about my genes. And genes on their own of course don't know much about the other two either. There is movement here, there is potential here, there is competence here. We have a very big advantage and opportunity to show the world how personalized medicine can be done," Uudam said.

However, Uudam said a very large vision is needed to make full use of this potential.

"It is very important to note that while there are certainly fields and technologies where we have the potential to develop things ourselves, there is also a lot that can be done through partnerships. For large technology companies, partnering with a country like ours can be very interesting, because our data is unique and very valuable," Uudam said.

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