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Purpose -Competitive success as a nation requires balancing commercial innovativeness and social welfare, which results in a sound basis for socio-economic development. All potential resources -including entrepreneurial activity and innovations -can be utilized as promoters of competitiveness and welfare. Thus, useful lessons for general national competitiveness can be learned from benchmarking individual innovations and perhaps even more so, from those less glamorized technologies such as human language technologies (HLT). Finnish researchers are considered to be at the leading edge of developments in a number of ICT fields. The main responsibility for the utilization of knowledge is seen, necessarily, to rest with the public sector, while the legislative framework is considered to favour entrepreneurship and innovation. Aims to discuss the issues. Design/methodology/approach -National competitiveness and HLT benchmarking pose a number of interesting questions and issues both macro and micro levels. For example: the extent to which benchmark performance in HLT is consistent with national competitiveness; link between robustness of research effort in any particular language community and effectiveness of technology transfer to market; and fostering and funding of entrepreneurial activity in HLT in the successful (benchmarked) countries and the fit with national vision and innovation policy. For the first two areas, relationships between HLT benchmark and comparative national competitiveness of top countries are examined through comparison of their respective primitive dimensions. Data sources include official and quasi-official public documents. The final stage is explored using a case study approach and comparative assessment against extant entrepreneurship literature.Findings -There appears to be no direct link between robustness of the HLT research effort in any particular language community and actual effectiveness of technology transfer to market. None the less, success in the Finnish HLT benchmark appears to correlate with the country's international competitiveness standing and "social innovation policy" paradigm. Its knowledge society model has clearly resulted in a sound basis for its socio-economic development, where all potential resources -including its entrepreneurial base -and innovations, can be utilized as promoters of competitiveness and welfare. Within this entrepreneurial base, HLT SMEs tend to seek scale economies through internationalise at the early stages of development. Originality/value -The paper shows that Finland is well placed to meet the challenges and to capitalise on the economic and social opportunities, given its strength in ICT/HLT innovation policy country's open self-criticism of the latter.

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What matters about an educational activity is how learners respond to it. This involves questions of “authenticity” (Widdowson, 1981) and of meaning, especially “meaning which is one's own” (Prabhu, 1987). If a learner responds as a pupil, not showing much personal interest, I call this an exercise. If a learner responds in a creative way, with spontaneity and independence, I call this a piece of work. Work authored by the learners themselves is authentic in a way that assignments provided by a teacher or materials designer are unlikely to be. This is significant for notions of learner autonomy which is partly a matter of learners having an opportunity to define their own meanings and develop them. Investigative research facilitates learners pursuing their own interests and meanings, and releases them from the need to behave as pupils. The change of status is emancipating and is a way of engaging learner autonomy.

Reports on research into the relationship between European defence manufacturing firms and their experience of cross-border strategic alliances. The research takes in 135 cross-border strategic alliances involving UK and European defence manufacturing firms, ranging from firms heavily dependent on defence contracts to firms whose defence interests make up less than 10 per cent of overall business. These firms manufacture telecommunications, transport, information, lethal platforms and components for the operation of these platforms for military organisations. A main aim is to ascertain the extent of participation in strategic alliances, the types of alliances being used and the major problems experienced by the partners.