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The idea for Nordic House

originated in the experiences of three companies run by Norwegians based in China. Starting up in China, or venturing into the Chinese market presents vast opportunities, but there are also a number of barriers and potential pitfalls. Gaining understanding of language, culture, laws and regulations, in addition to setting up office facilities and hiring staff is a time- and resource-demanding process. There are many independent entrepreneurs who start from scratch building up their network and knowledge of the Chinese market. Others are functioning as chief representatives of international companies, and are sent to China to build up an organization, production or R&D facilities, supplier network or a customer base.

The founders represent both these categories. Energy and Environment Advisory was started by a Norwegian entrepreneur with a long and extensive experience from doing business in China, both in investment, acquisitions and functioning as a chief representative of an international company. The other company, Heat-Com has a Norwegian representative who has learnt fluent Chinese and built up a network of Chinese partners to enter into the Chinese market. The third company, Nordic Resource Group (NRG) is a consultancy consisting of 5 Norwegian and Chinese partners who assist companies in doing business in China, and Chinese companies in accessing foreign investors and markets.

When meeting in various social gatherings, they exchanged stories of successes and failures of foreign companies in China and different aspects of Chinese and Western culture. They realized that combined, the knowledge of Nordic business people in China represents a valuable asset that is in many ways untapped. For those who was well established with thriving businesses in China it was also pointed out that it would have been nice with a social arena where you could chat around the lunch table and the coffee machine. All the Nordic countries have active business organizations that hold relevant seminars and organize social events, but on an everyday basis, people were scattered around Beijing steering the wheel to the best of their knowledge.

Thus, they decided to rent an office space and call it Nordic House. Thy decided to keep the costs of entering to a minimum, and that it would be administered voluntarily by the founders on the side of their normal business activity. In the start-up they did not apply for public or other funding, so they set up a basic but good quality solution and developed it from there.

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