After starting the day with a typical Estonian breakfast, we headed to our first visit of the day with the Estonian Development Fund. This is a unique company owned by the Estonian parliament. The company is responsible for advising and researching new ways to improve the Estonian economy. One problem, which the company was trying to overcome, is that that because their country is so open and strongly connected to other countries through trade, the effects of the recent economic downturn has effected them worse than most other countries. The company is also involved in venture capital for entrepreneurs. One of the main things they are looking for are companies not only with a good business plan but also with long term goals of expanding globally.
We left the Estonian Development Fund later than we had planned to and had to grab a quick lunch before heading to our next company visit. We split up and some of our group ate Turkish food while the others went back to a favorite Italian restaurant in the mall. We took the public bus, which is always an adventure, to our company visit .
We arrived at ABB Estonia after a short ride and were introduced to Rainer Sternfeld who talked to us about the company. ABB Estonia is a global leader in power and automation technologies and is concerned with improving their electrical power efficiency while lowering their impact on the environment. The company has achieved success in a troubled economy and although they have been impacted by the global recession, they have still managed to achieve success and employ over 6,000 scientist and engineers.
After the company visit, we booked our tickets to Finland for this Friday and went back to our rooms for some rest. We had a late start to dinner. Some of the group headed to a Chinese restaurant in Old Town and while the rest of the group tried a new pizza place. As a group we are not big fans of traditional Estonian food.
Daniel McClendon
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