San Francisco Seminar 2008
Day 1
Innovation, entrepreneurship and service design in Silicon Valley
Introduction and context
The first day of the seminar in San Francisco 2008 set the tone for the entire week. The theme was innovation as a process and culture, and how value creation in Silicon Valley is not just about technology, but about networking, learning and the open sharing of knowledge.
The seminar brought together academics, business leaders and innovators for a joint reflection on what creates the most dynamic ecosystems in the world.
Several of the presentations pointed out that service innovation — thinking holistically about user experience, design, and business model — was the new driving force for competitiveness.
This was the year where concepts such as open innovation, business model innovation and customer co-creation really gained a foothold internationally.
Program overview
Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley - March 31, 2008
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Jerry Engel: Silicon Valley – Best Practices and Emerging Trends
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Helen Bulwik: Entrepreneurship and Innovation – Service Innovation
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Jim Baty (Sun Microsystems): Open Architecture Network – An e-community for innovation
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Workshop: Business Model Exploration
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Group work and reflection: how to transfer principles from Silicon Valley to Nordic businesses
Main academic topics
Innovation and strategy
Engel presented Silicon Valley as a living model of entrepreneurial ecology – an interaction between capital, knowledge, risk-taking and networks.
He emphasized five key components that characterize the region:
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Entrepreneurship Culture – Failure is part of the learning process.
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Access to capital – Risky venture capital connected to professional environments.
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Close connection between academia and business – Especially Stanford and Berkeley.
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Multidisciplinary teams and high mobility – People change roles and build new skills continuously.
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Open sharing and learning – Competitors inspire each other; innovation happens across companies.
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He pointed out how the DNA of innovation in Silicon Valley is about the ability to combine technology, creativity and business savvy in an environment that encourages experimentation.
Service Innovation – Helen Bulwik
Helen Bulwik took as her starting point how service innovation has become as important a value driver as product innovation.
She described how many companies have shifted focus from what we make to how we deliver value.
Bulwik introduced a framework for service design thinking, which connects customer insights with process improvement, and showed how this can be implemented in practice through:
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Customer journey mapping
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Use of prototypes and pilot projects for testing
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Measuring emotional value, not just financial results
She emphasized that the future competitive advantage does not lie in technology alone, but in how customers experience the service.
Open Innovation and Community – Jim Baty
Jim Baty presented the Open Architecture Network, a groundbreaking digital initiative from Sun Microsystems.
This was an early precursor to platforms for global sharing of innovation projects – a form of open source applied to service development and sustainability.
The project illustrated how open innovation can be used to solve complex societal challenges.
Through a network of businesses, academics and volunteers, new ideas could be tested, improved and scaled faster than in traditional corporate structures.
Case studies
Several examples were presented to illustrate the ideas:
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Sun Microsystems' open platform for social entrepreneurship.
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Nordic SMEs experimenting with new business models, based on experiences from the San Francisco environment.
These cases showed how learning from Silicon Valley can be translated to other contexts — but that success requires both structural and cultural change.
Reflections and discussion:
The discussions this day revolved around the question:
“How can we bring the Silicon Valley mentality back to Norway?”
Among the answers:
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Create space for experimentation in public and private enterprises.
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Give greater autonomy to teams.
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Several participants highlighted that Norwegian businesses often have the resources, but lack the ability to implement and the willingness to take risks – a recurring theme also in later seminars.
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Build closer collaboration between academia, business and the public sector.
International perspectives
The lectures showed how crucial international partnerships are for innovation.
San Francisco serves as a global melting pot of ideas, where cultural diversity, technology and capital meet.
For the participants from the Nordic countries, it was inspiring to see how innovation was considered a globally shareable resource, not a national competitive advantage.
What do we take home with us?
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Innovation must be understood as a social system, not a project.
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Culture and management are just as important as technology.
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User insight and empathy must be integrated into the innovation process.
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Openness and collaboration create momentum – secrecy slows down development.
Relevance today
What was discussed in 2008 is almost prophetic today. Digitalization, service innovation and customer experience are core elements in both the private and public sectors. The same principles underlie everything from smart city strategies to user-driven innovation in healthcare. The seminar helped establish a mindset that still characterizes Norwegian innovation policy and business development.
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 developments through internet, web, e-commerce, search, UX, social, mobile, omnichannel, cloud, data, platforms and digital transformation – up to today’s AI First developments.
→ 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
Business Model Generation
Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur introduced a new and visual framework for how companies develop, test, and innovate business models. The book shows how innovation, customer insight, service design, and value creation must be seen in context to create sustainable businesses in a digital economy.
