“We’re only No. 2. So we try harder.”

That line, created by Paula Green, is among the most celebrated pieces of advertising copy ever written. It turned a bothersome fact — that car-rental firm Avis was lagging well behind market leader Hertz — into a point of pride. A weakness recast as a virtue: the underdog who has to earn every customer.

I’m thinking of Avis now that I’m at the European Quantum Technologies Conference, held this year in Copenhagen.

This city is the capital of what was, for so long, Sweden’s envious younger sibling — a club in which Denmark was joined by the other Nordic countries. For decades, Sweden set the tone in everything from arthouse cinema to pop music, industrial design, and progressive politics. It was all things modern: the sun around which its Nordic neighbours, whether they liked it or not, found themselves orbiting.

Plenty of Swedes are still riding that high, understandably flattered by being hailed as Europe’s crown jewel of innovation.

And sure, it’s impressive that we rank just behind the US in unicorns per capita — but that kind of lofty, aggregate view tends to obscure what’s actually happening within specific verticals. I’m thinking, of course, of quantum.

This is a field where Sweden ought to have been at the forefront, given the early and resolute bet made by the Wallenberg Foundation, which began pouring money into a national quantum ecosystem as early as 2018.

Yet as things have unfolded, that initiative — vital though it is — now seems to have done little more than keep us in the race. In quantum, we’re lagging badly behind our Nordic neighbours, Denmark and Finland.

I grew up in the countryside, and whenever I had the chance to visit Stockholm, it was like stepping through a portal — the air seemed charged, the pavements humming with possibility. Everything felt closer to the pulse of the world, as if the city itself were tuned to a higher frequency.

While I never fell out of love with Stockholm, I now feel the same way about coming to Copenhagen. It’s as if the centre of gravity has shifted. You sense it in the corridors, in the casual confidence of the Danish and Finnish teams presenting their quantum hardware, in the quiet assumption that the real action is happening here.

I like the feeling it provokes. Being a runner-up makes me want to try harder.