One of the annoying consequences is that some parts of the system decide to clean up "old" data. Surely data that has been stale for 50 years can be deleted, right? I cannot imagine the impact of something similar happening on a production server.

- Early broadband investments and subsidized PCs (as stated in the article).

- Good e-government and digital infrastructure, which means little bureaucracy for starting and running a company, but also availability of out of the box tools to build complex products. Example is bankID, an ubiquitous digital ID solution which startups can us for instant customer identification that lives up to all legal requirements.

- Early success in building global tech brands (Skype, Spotify, even Pirate Bay), which laid the foundation for a self-reinforcing ecosystem (self image, newly minted angel investors, media attention etc.)

- Generally a positive attitude towards tech among the population. Unlike in large parts of continental Europe, being a pessimists/naysayer about new things doesn't give you a lot of status in large parts of Swedish society. Being an early-adopter does.

- Hands off regulation. Not necessarily by virtue, but rather as an accidental side effect of Swedish (political) and administrative culture. Sweden is culturally and politically pretty bad at preparing for negative outcomes. "We have been naive" and "we didn't see it coming" are frequently heard statements from politicians about negative societal developments. For the tech sector, this is great, since startups can try new things without too much early interference by the state or bureaucrats (example: Unlike in many/if not most other European countries, rental e-scooters have been introduced with almost no regulation. Regulation is only now happening, after issues became apparent).