The Norway example is really annoying. It keeps coming back as an example to follow, when everybody knows it is a complete outlier that cannot be reproduced elsewhere.

Norway is sitting on a gigantic pile of offshore gas that it uses to generate massive profits that go into a huge fund they don't know what to do with, all of that for a 5M population that drowns into social programs.

There is literally no country in the world that has this ratio of natural resources $ / capita.

Yet, when you look at what Norway has actually produced over the past few decades in terms of innovation, companies, etc. the picture is very, very empty.