With the Crown Prince Couple at the forefront of a business promotional campaign in the USA in September 2016, 60 Danish companies and 2 ministers participated. On the four-day visit to Washington, DC and Boston, HRH The Crown Prince focused on promoting Danish business interests, particularly in the clean-tech area and for the maritime trade.
In his speech at the opening of The Consultative Shipping Group’s seminar, where the shipping administrators from 18 countries including Denmark were gathered, The Crown Prince emphasized Denmark’s visibility on the maritime world map:
“Danish maritime companies have drawn upon knowledge from generations of seafarers and used it to influence the global maritime world. Today, you can find Danish equipment on ships around the globe and our maritime industry has a significant 25% share of the total Danish exports.”
During the business promotional campaign, The Crown Prince also visited the event Clean Water Caucus, which demonstrated the sustainable water technologies of Danish companies to American decision-makers. In addition to that, The Crown Prince was on hand to promote Danish sustainable technologies to American companies at the event “Cities as Drivers for Sustainability” at the University of Boston and at a seminar on sustainability in Boston.
Honours for Danish researchers
Some months before, in connection with the Danish Energy Association’s annual Energy Summit, The Crown Prince was present to honour Danish energy researchers.
“You all aspire to being some of the future successful Danish businesses. Thus, you inspire other new hopeful, talented and enterprising companies to do well,” said The Crown Prince in his speech. Afterwards, The Crown Prince awarded the ELFORSK Award 2016, which went to STEAMREG, which is a new and patent-pending technology which reduces the energy bill for dehumidification. Through the years, The Crown Prince has helped to generate focus on researchers and entrepreneurs. Previously, The Crown Prince has honoured entrepreneurs at the international competition for entrepreneurs from creative trades, the Creative Business Cup, in 2012 and 2014.
Support for Danish entrepreneurs
Silicon Valley in California is described as an epicentre in the development of new technologies and growth-orientated business models, and in 2016 The Crown Prince became the patron of DenmarkBridge, which is a new organisation which will strengthen the bridge between Danish business communities and the development taking place in Silicon Valley.
The Crown Prince has helped support the bridge between the business community and Danish entrepreneurs over a number of years. Most recently in January, when The Danish Industry Foundation’s Entrepreneur Award was handed out at the Danish Tech Challenge Award Show. Here, The Crown Prince gave the 500,000 DKK prize to the company Bifrost Communications, which has devised a method for increasing the transmission distance and the capacity of fibre-optic signals and networks.
In May, The Crown Prince will hand out another prize, the DenmarkBridge Award 2017, and in this connection, The Crown Prince says,
“I think it is important that the entrepreneurial spirit in Denmark is supported, regardless of whether it applies to high technology, software, design or something completely different. With the DenmarkBridge award, the companies that have been able to establish their names in Silicon Valley are honoured. That is a major achievement, and their presence helps to give Denmark a foothold in one of the most competitive business environments in the world. Their success shows that it can pay off to dream big and to work hard.”
