The technologies in which Slovenian companies excel with their products include healthcare, biotech, niche products for the automotive industry, advanced measurement systems, exotic alloys, and ultrasmall aircrafts.
Guess where the world’s first computer vision-based ski jump metering system comes from? For sport connoisseurs the answer is rather obvious: from Slovenia, home of the legendary ski-jumping and flying hill Planica, and home to many champions of this rather exotic sport. This fact highlights not only a national obsession with sports, but perhaps also the most essential strategic direction of Slovenian industry: a focus on technological excellence within a very narrow niche. The ski jump metering system brings together computer vision and metering technology, which are both examples of this strategy being successfully implemented. But in which technologies can you find the best examples of Slovenian companies making world class, if not even market leading, products?
Let’s start with one of the nation’s key exporting branches – pharmaceutical, biotech, and other health care related products. This industry regularly receives the largest number of national annual innovation awards. The areas in which Slovenian companies have developed world class products include biosimilar drugs, proton therapy equipment, medical lasers, and bioprocessing equipment used in the production of gene therapy drugs and vaccines. This cluster also includes SMEs developing top notch equipment and processes for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, such as automatic visual inspection systems for example.
Another competitive exporter is the automotive industry with niche champions in areas like diesel cold ignition systems. Slovenian companies develop some world's leading electric motors for narrowly specialized usage. Several local tech leaders make key components for electric drive systems. Kolektor, for example, is a global market leader in the production of commutators and permanent plastomagnets, two elements essential for the switch to more sustainable mobility. Many premium European electric cars use main drive systems components like rotors and stators developed by Slovenian tech company Hidria. The latest example is the Maserati GranTurismo Folgore – the fully electric beast accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in under three seconds!
A third cluster of global tech leaders hailing from a nation of only two million people are the producers of advanced measurement systems, including equipment, sensors, and analytics software. These systems are, perhaps most interestingly, used in space exploration and in most of the world’s particle accelerators. The majority of these products, however, are designed for more mundane uses in vehicles, industry, and smart homes. An essential part of a measurement system is software to make sense of all the data collected by the various sensors. Similar logic is used in geospatial information technologies – another area with a strong Slovenian presence.
The Slovenian metal industry may not be large, yet it is another typical example of narrow specialization and technical excellence. Steel alloys developed in Slovenia are used by the aerospace industry, in the CERN accelerator and in experimental fusion reactors. Local aluminium producers develop processes with leading energy efficiency and use artificial intelligence to create new alloys. Similar patterns can be found in electronics: Slovenian SMEs excel in the development of narrowly specialized printed circuit boards and other electronic elements for the most demanding applications. Arguably the world’s most advanced ultrasmall aircraft powered by electricity, hybrid drives, or hydrogen cells are also developed in Slovenia. To loop back around to where we started, let's return to winter sports; as a tech leader in skiing innovation Elan developed the world's first pair of carving skis. Recently they introduced the first truly usable folding skis, while Slatnar, another company, is one of the world’s few makers of skis for jumping and flying.
Slovenians like to excel in sports and in business. As the old Slovenian saying goes; it’s better to be first in the village than last in the city. This is obviously wisdom followed by a growing number of Slovenia’s dynamic SMEs as they focus on dominating in their narrow niches.
