San Francisco Seminar 2006
Day 1
Attending the San Francisco 2004 seminar was a professional and personal milestone. Through a week of lectures, company visits and discussions, I gained insight into how American businesses work with innovation, technology and customer experience.
Introduction and context
The seminar in San Francisco in March 2006 marked a professional highlight in the Innovation and Commercialization program.
After several years of theoretical and practical approaches to innovation, entrepreneurship, and digital transformation, this seminar represented a direct meeting point with the ecosystem that has shaped modern business: Silicon Valley.
Day 1 started with an introduction by BI and Peder Inge Furseth, who reminded us that the purpose was not just to learn about success stories – but to understand the mechanisms behind innovation. How are ideas, people and capital connected? How is knowledge created and shared in networks that drive technological development forward?
Program overview
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Day 1 – Monday, March 13, 2006
• Introduction – Peder Inge Furseth (BI): goals and expectations
• John Freeman – Innovation and eBusiness in Silicon Valley
• Phillip Gordon – From Vision to Product
• Andrew Hargadon – How Breakthroughs Happen
• Jaz Banga (Feeva) – Lessons from a Startup – Innovation in Practice
Main academic topics
Innovation as a social and economic process
Andrew Hargadon ( UC Davis ) introduced a key perspective for the day: innovation is not the result of the genius of individuals, but of networks and connections between ideas, people, and practices.
He used the term technology brokering – where innovators act as connecting points between industries and technologies.
Hargadon showed how companies like IDEO and 3M succeed because they are able to combine knowledge across disciplines, and how innovation is actually about reorganizing existing solutions in new ways.
From vision to product
Phillip Gordon took as his starting point how an idea can move from concept to commercial product.
His talk emphasized prototyping, market understanding and timing, and how innovation requires equal parts structure and creativity.
He pointed out that many companies fail not because the idea is bad, but because it fails to find its market or is launched too early.
The Silicon Valley ecosystem
John Freeman described Silicon Valley as a self-reinforcing ecosystem where universities, venture capital, networks and companies interact in a continuous cycle of innovation. He showed how a culture of collaboration, mobility and risk-taking has created a unique learning loop – where knowledge flows freely and mistakes are seen as an investment in learning.
Entrepreneurship in practice
Jaz Banga shared concrete experiences from Feeva, a company that developed technology for targeted internet advertising and wireless communications. He described how Silicon Valley entrepreneurs often have to combine technological insight with the ability to build trust and capital, and how the acceleration in the technology market requires quick decisions and flexible teams.
Case studies
IDEO and 3M (Hargadon)
Both companies were used as examples of how systematic creativity works in practice. They build environments that foster interdisciplinary collaboration and continuous knowledge sharing – a model that many have subsequently tried to copy.
Feeva (Banga)
A concrete example of early-stage innovation, where they tried to commercialize technology in WiFi and personalization of digital communication. Feeva illustrated how business model and technology must evolve in tandem, and how market maturity is crucial for success.
Reflections and discussion:
The discussions after the lectures revolved around differences between Norway and the USA – particularly in financing, culture, and acceptance of risk.
An important realization was that Norway often lacks the “invisible glue” between academia, capital and business that makes Silicon Valley unique.
Several participants also highlighted the need for innovation management as a discipline, not just as an ideal.
International perspectives
Silicon Valley was understood as a global reference point for innovation, but at the same time as a system with assumptions that cannot be easily copied.
The speakers emphasized that the value lies not in imitating the model, but in translating the principles into national contexts: trust, openness, networking, and learning through practice.
What did we take home with us?
Innovation is as much about people as it is about technology.
Networks, relationships and sharing are the very fuel of value creation.
Norway must build bridges between research, business and capital.
Managing innovation requires patience, confidence and a willingness to fail.
Relevance today
In 2025, Hargadon's theory of technology brokering and Freeman's descriptions of ecosystems appear more relevant than ever. Interdisciplinarity, open innovation and collaboration across sectors have become fundamental success factors. Many Norwegian companies have learned from this type of thinking in recent years - both in the public sector, industry and digital commerce.
Peder Inge Furseth
Peder Inge Furseth was a central academic driving force behind the San Francisco seminars and helped make the meeting with Silicon Valley relevant for Norwegian and European businesses. Through his role as professor at BI and as academic director of the program, he helped the participants put the lectures into a larger context – where technology, innovation, business development and people had to be seen in context.
In San Francisco, participants met entrepreneurs, researchers, technology leaders and investors from some of the world's most innovative environments. Furseth's strength was his ability to connect these experiences to practical challenges and opportunities in Norwegian businesses. He helped translate Silicon Valley's ideas and working methods into a Nordic context where collaboration, trust and long-term value creation are strong.
Throughout the entire seminar series, he was an important bridge builder between research, business and technology. For many participants, he therefore became more than a professional leader – he also became a mentor who inspired new thinking about innovation, digitalization and commercialization.
Read more about Peder Inge Furseth here
From studies and seminars to today's professional universe
The studies, seminars and field trips documented on this page are part of the knowledge base behind The Invisible Capital. Topics such as customers, technology, innovation, digitalization and value creation have followed developments over several decades – but the disciplines have also continued to develop.
At The Invisible Capital, we are therefore continuing to work on these questions in our own subject series. Here, we connect previous theory, research and experiences with newer knowledge, new technologies and today's challenges for people and businesses.
Innovation
Innovation is not just about new ideas. Value is created when knowledge, technology and ideas are developed into products, services, processes, organizational forms and business models that are actually used. The series on innovation goes from Schumpeter to modern innovation research and covers, among other things, incremental, radical, disruptive, open and user-driven innovation.
→ Explore the Innovation Series
The customer
The customer is not just the recipient of what the business produces. In a competitive market, the customer is a crucial determinant of whether the business actually succeeds in creating value. The series about the customer goes deeper into customer orientation, customer insight, customer experience, satisfaction, loyalty, trust and the encounter between people.
→ Read the customer series
Value creation
What does it really mean to create value – and who creates it? The series on value creation moves from economic theory and key researchers to a broader understanding of how people, expertise, institutions, businesses and the public sector contribute to value creation.
→ Read the series on value creation
Digitization
Digitalization has evolved from stand-alone technologies to a fundamental part of how businesses work and create value. The Digitalization from A–Z series follows the development through internet, web, e-commerce, search, UX, social, mobile, omnichannel, cloud, data, platforms and digital transformation – up to today’s AI First development.
→ Read the series Digitization from A–Z
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence represents the next chapter in digital evolution. In our own AI universe, we investigate how artificial intelligence works, how AI finds and uses information, how it evaluates sources and websites, and what the development can mean for people, businesses, and value creation.
→ Go to the articles about artificial intelligence
Recommended literature
The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
A key book about what characterizes innovative people and organizations. Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen explore how observation, curiosity, networking, experimentation, and the ability to ask questions create the foundation for innovation and new ideas.
