In the early 90's, I met newspaper designer Pelle Andersson and his friend Robert Braunerhjelm. I myself had my background as a newspaper CEO at A-pressen.

It turned out that we all three had the same idea: It should be possible to make a daily newspaper that was entirely funded by ads and did not depend on subscription revenue.

It should be possible to use the subway as a distribution channel and local advertisers who could not afford to market themselves in Dagens nyheter or Svenska Dagbladet would have an alternative to flyers.

Digitalization had begun to make its entry into the printing industry, so you no longer needed to own a printing press to publish a newspaper. Also, there was no need to be a graphic designer to press the send button on the computer when sending a text away (although the graphic designers themselves claimed this in the longest).

Together, I, Pelle and Robert formed a joint-stock company to develop the idea, which we named the Stockholmsnotisen AB, a completely hopeless name, which we then came up with.

Our mutual friend Jörgen Widsell proposed the name Metro and after a bit of sting and beech we decided to change (among other things there was a food chain in Stockholm at the time with the same name).

It took almost four years to develop the idea and bring us Greater Stockholm Local Traffic (SL) - and it took almost as long to find a financier.

The only (!) Who dared to invest was Jan Stenbeck, but the condition was that he should buy the whole company from us and that we would go in as employees.

Metro released its first issue on February 13, 1995.

It wasn't a rocket science idea, like this afterwards. It was simply an example of thinking differently in a mature industry. Which was revolutionary, oddly enough.

But the media industry then, as now, is conservative and has its own truths.

For example, it was thought that newspaper consumption was a zero sum game. If someone increased their circulation it was at someone else's expense and that a serious morning newspaper could never be published in a "cheap" tabloid format.

The legendary Stig Hadenius predicted the newspaper's sudden death because we had no leader page or political color (I knew from my time in the A-press that only 2 percent of all readers read a leader page)

Media professor Lennart Weibull, in turn, claimed that the Swedish daily newspaper market was over-established and that there was no room for a new local newspaper.

But Metro was no new local newspaper. It was a new way of conveying news to everyone, for free - even to groups that had not previously been news consumers such as pensioners, immigrants and young people.

You could say that it was both a democracy and a people education project that also came to be very profitable, at least for a period.

But every case has its time. The idea of ​​Metro as a paper magazine held for about 15 years here in Sweden. Then came the smart phones.

About 20 years ago, I thought it was fun to go underground and count how many people read the newspaper and I used to joke that I had not lived in vain. Today everyone is sitting with their smartphones instead, but the need for the news distribution to everyone that Metro stood for, remains.

Perhaps Metro's (economic) success was also its downfall. They did not want to see and invest in the new technology in time.

Interestingly, the Metro concept (in other local ownership) is still internationally successful. Especially in countries where the new technology has not yet come this far.

The moral of the sense is that all industries and all companies must live with their time and try to develop in step with time.

Without suspense, no idea!