Experts and Sources of Inspiration

Richard L. Daft

Richard L. Daft is a professor and author in the fields of organization theory and management, and for several decades he has been an important academic voice in understanding how organizations function, evolve, and adapt to change. He is particularly known for his books on organization and management, which have been widely used at universities and colleges around the world. Daft combines classical organization theory with modern perspectives on innovation, technology, culture, and change management, making his work highly relevant in today’s digital society.

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Daft is particularly interesting because he clearly demonstrates that organizations are not simply about structures and hierarchies, but about people, culture, communication, and the ability to manage complexity. He describes how organizations must balance stable operations with innovation and development, and how leadership involves far more than control and reporting. This perspective is especially relevant to digitalization, where technology alone rarely solves challenges unless the organization also develops its culture, expertise, and ways of working.

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In the context of The Invisible Capital, Daft provides an important academic framework for understanding how organizations can develop their capacity for learning, collaboration, and adaptation over time. His work helps explain why some organizations succeed in managing change and development, while others become trapped in silos, cumbersome processes, and short-term management. Daft also emphasizes leadership as the ability to create direction, meaning, and effective interaction among people, which aligns closely with the project’s focus on value creation through relationships and expertise.

Thomas Hayes "Tom" Davenport, Jr.

Tom Davenport is a professor, author, and one of the leading voices in knowledge management, analytics, and data-driven business development. For several decades, he has explored how organizations can use information, technology, and analytics to improve decision-making, innovation, and value creation. Davenport was an early advocate of the idea that data and analytics could become a strategic competitive advantage, long before concepts such as artificial intelligence and big data became part of mainstream public debate.

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Through books such as Competing on Analytics and Working Knowledge (not available), he has demonstrated that organizations need more than technology to succeed with digital transformation. They also need the right culture, expertise, and organizational structures. Davenport is particularly relevant to the work on The Invisible Capital because he focuses on knowledge as a strategic resource and emphasizes the importance of combining technology with human insight and experience.

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His perspectives are also highly relevant to the public sector and the development of digital services. Davenport demonstrates that data alone does not create better services or better decisions. What matters is how organizations are able to turn insights into action, improvement, and continuous learning. This connects directly to challenges related to digitalization, user understanding, and the ability to execute—all of which are central themes in the project.

Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond is a professor, historian, and author known for his analyses of how societies develop, succeed, and collapse over time. He combines perspectives from history, geography, biology, and the social sciences to explain why some societies have created stable structures and sustained development, while others have stagnated or collapsed. Diamond is particularly known for the books Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, in which he examines how technology, resources, culture, and leadership influence societal development.

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In the context of The Invisible Capital, Diamond is particularly relevant because he broadens the perspective beyond individual companies and demonstrates how long-term thinking, collaboration, knowledge, and the ability to adapt are essential to sustainable development. His perspectives provide a broader understanding of how societies, organizations, and economies are shaped over time, and why short-term decisions can often have significant long-term consequences.

Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker is regarded as one of the founders of modern management theory and has had an enormous influence on how organizations are managed and developed. He was among the first to place a strong focus on knowledge workers and the importance of management as a distinct discipline. Drucker’s perspectives connect strategy, organizations, and people in a way that continues to make his work highly relevant, providing an important academic foundation for understanding how value is created in practice.

John Doerr

John Doerr is an investor, venture capitalist, and a prominent figure in the development of Silicon Valley through his work at Kleiner Perkins. He was an early investor in companies such as Google and Amazon and is particularly known for popularizing the goal-setting methodology OKRs—Objectives and Key Results. Doerr has had a major influence on how technology companies approach focus, prioritization, and execution, and his perspectives are relevant because they connect strategy, innovation, and practical management in a concrete and measurable way.

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The book Measure What Matters has become one of the most important introductions to the OKR methodology and demonstrates how clear objectives combined with measurable results can contribute to stronger focus, better execution, and faster innovation. Through concrete examples from companies such as Google, John Doerr illustrates how clear direction and continuous follow-up can create both growth and organizational learning. In the context of digitalization and service development, the book is particularly relevant because it emphasizes the importance of connecting strategy to actual action and measurable results.

Stephen Ezell

He is one of the experts who, in many ways, connects several of the major themes that ran throughout the seminars in both Oxford and San Francisco. He represented not only technology or innovation in a narrow sense, but a broader perspective on how society, business, research, and public policy are interconnected when building future competitiveness.

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What made an impression on me about Stephen Ezell was his ability to place technology within a larger context. Many people talk about innovation as if it is simply about new products or rapid technological breakthroughs, but Ezell often elevated the discussion to a level where innovation was also about culture, education, collaboration, investment, public policy, and long-term strategy. This fit very well with many of the reflections we explored through the BI networks and seminars. Innovation was not presented as something isolated that happens within a single company, but as something that emerges within ecosystems where people, businesses, and societies influence one another over time.

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Through his work at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, he also helped highlight how different countries compete for talent, technology, and innovation capacity. Many of the lectures and discussions at the seminars focused precisely on this: why some countries and regions succeed more than others, how Silicon Valley was built over several decades, and why long-term thinking matters so much when developing strong professional communities and sustainable businesses.

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I was also struck by how strongly service innovation featured in much of his work. This was not simply traditional industrial or technology thinking. It was about how digital solutions, services, and customer experiences were gradually becoming increasingly important drivers of the economy. Many of us working with digitalization in practice—whether in aviation, the public sector, culture, or international organizations—recognized much of this. Technology alone does not create value unless we also understand people, user journeys, organizations, and service.

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There was also something inspiring about the optimism represented by many of these speakers. Not naive optimism, but a belief that innovation can genuinely help solve problems, improve services, and create new opportunities when we are able to combine expertise, collaboration, and a willingness to think long term. This made the seminars in both Oxford and San Francisco much more than academic lectures. They became meeting places where we gained new perspectives on how technology, society, and people develop together.

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In retrospect, it is interesting to see how much of what Stephen Ezell and others discussed at the time remains highly relevant today. Topics such as digital transformation, global technology competition, innovation capacity, artificial intelligence, and the need for continuous adaptation have only become more important. This is precisely why experts like these remain important voices in the professional journey that eventually became part of the foundation for The Invisible Capital.

Peder Inge Furseth

has had a very special significance in the professional journey underlying The Invisible Capital and Value-Creating People. Some people leave a lasting impression through what they teach. Others do so through the way they interact with people. Peder Inge Furseth has done both.

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Through the Oxford seminars, San Francisco seminars, Innovation Program at BI Norwegian Business School, and a long series of professional networking events, he has been a driving force in building bridges between research, business, technology, and people. But perhaps even more importantly, he has built bridges between people. That is a quality that does not always show up in curricula, academic titles, or presentations, but often matters most over time.

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For many, Peder Inge Furseth has been more than a lecturer. He has been a gateway to professional communities, international perspectives, and new ways of understanding innovation and digitalization. He has had a rare ability to bring together people from different industries, backgrounds, and levels of professional experience around the same table—and make everyone feel included in the conversation. That is a quality that cannot be learned through theory alone. It is about how you see people.

Through the seminars in Oxford and San Francisco, he created more than academic programs. He created meeting places. Many of the most important reflections, relationships, and ideas emerged precisely because he understood that learning happens through interaction between people—in discussions after lectures, around dinner tables, in hotel lobbies, on bus rides between company visits, and through the small conversations that connect knowledge with experience.

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It is difficult to overstate the significance these seminars had for many participants. Oxford provided space for reflection, history, academic depth, and perspective. San Francisco and Silicon Valley opened windows into technology, entrepreneurship, innovation, and the digital society of the future. Through both environments, Peder Inge Furseth managed to create a common thread in which theory, practice, and human experiences were woven together in a way that made learning come alive.

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For me personally, he has been highly influential as a mentor in the field. Not through grand words or distance, but through inclusion, trust, and genuine interest in the people around him. He has had a unique ability to see people, connect people, and make them feel that they belong in professional communities. That is a rare quality—especially in environments that could easily become characterized by prestige and distance.

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Many people talk about networks as something strategic. With Peder Inge Furseth, networking feels more like community. Over many years, he has built professional environments where people learn from one another, inspire one another, and develop together. It is not simply about technology or innovation in the narrow sense, but about understanding how people, culture, organizations, and relationships create the foundation for development and value creation.

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What is also striking is the warmth with which he interacts with people. He has a calm and inclusive way of being that makes people feel welcome, whether they are students, executives, researchers, or practitioners from working life. He does not come across as someone who wants to place himself above others, but as someone who genuinely wants to share knowledge, inspire curiosity, and build a community around learning and development.

In the work on The Invisible Capital, Peder Inge Furseth therefore becomes an important part of the foundational story itself. Not simply because he organized seminars or taught innovation, but because he represents a way of approaching professional knowledge in which people are at the center. He shows that knowledge is not primarily about titles or theories alone, but about relationships, sharing, trust, and the ability to bring others into the community.

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Many of the traces left by Oxford, San Francisco, the Innovation Program, and the professional networks continue to live on precisely because they were built this way. Not as closed elite arenas, but as open learning environments where people could grow, think out loud, ask questions, and develop together.

It is difficult to think about this professional journey without also thinking about Peder Inge Furseth. He has not only shared knowledge about innovation and digitalization. He has also shown how people can create lasting value through generosity, curiosity, relationships, and a genuine interest in other people.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates is one of the most important figures in modern technology history and a central figure in the development of the digital infrastructure on which much of today’s society is built. For Magne Bjella, Bill Gates represents not only software and technology, but also an understanding of how digital platforms, standardization, and long-term technological development can transform working life, business, and the public sector.

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While many associate Steve Jobs with design and products, Bill Gates represents, to a greater extent, the very foundation of everyday digital life. Through Microsoft, Gates helped make computers and software accessible to millions of people around the world—in homes, schools, businesses, and public institutions.

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For Magne, this is particularly relevant because much of the digital development he later worked with at SAS, the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, Navico, and Bærum Municipality was built precisely on technologies from the Microsoft ecosystem:

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• Windows

• Office

• Outlook

• server platforms

• cloud technology

• collaboration tools

• Azure

• Microsoft-based CMS solutions

In many ways, Microsoft became the infrastructure of the digital workplace throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

Bill Gates founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975. From an early stage, Gates understood that software would become as important as hardware. While many companies focused on the computers themselves, Gates saw the potential in operating systems and standardized software platforms that could be used by large numbers of people.

This became evident through the development of:

• MS-DOS

• Windows

• Word

• Excel

• PowerPoint

• the Office suite

These tools transformed working life globally. Office work, document management, communication, and presentations were digitized on a scale the world had never previously experienced.

For Magne Bjella, this is an important part of the story of digitalization. Microsoft made technology available on a massive scale—not only to technology companies, but also to ordinary workplaces, organizations, and public institutions. This laid the foundation for the continued development of the internet, digital services, and modern ways of working.

Bill Gates was also an early advocate of scalability and platform thinking. Microsoft did not simply develop individual products—they built ecosystems in which software, developers, hardware, and users could work together. This perspective later became crucial to cloud technology, digital platforms, and modern IT architecture.

In the context of The Invisible Capital and Value-Creating People, Bill Gates is relevant because he represents how technology can become a tool for productivity, knowledge sharing, and societal development on a massive scale. He demonstrated how standardized digital tools could give people new opportunities to work, collaborate, and communicate across national borders.

Gates later also became one of the world’s best-known philanthropists through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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After stepping back from Microsoft, he became deeply involved in areas including:

• global health

• vaccines

• education

• poverty reduction

• research

• climate

This is also an important part of the Bill Gates story. He went from being a technology entrepreneur to using much of his wealth and influence to address global societal challenges.

For Magne Bjella, Bill Gates therefore represents not only technology, but also long-term thinking and the belief that knowledge is a driving force for development. Gates helped build the digital infrastructure that later made the internet, modern websites, digital services, and cloud-based solutions possible.

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Perhaps that is precisely why Bill Gates remains so relevant:

Because he understood that technology is not simply about machines and software—but about how people work, learn, collaborate, and continue to develop society through knowledge and accessible tools.

James H. Gilmore

James H. Gilmore is an author and strategist specializing in customer experience, the experience economy, and business development.

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Together with B. Joseph Pine II, he helped establish The Experience Economy as an important perspective in modern marketing and service innovation.

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In The Experience Economy, Gilmore describes how people increasingly seek meaningful experiences rather than simply products and services. This perspective challenged traditional economic thinking and had a significant impact on service, retail, culture, tourism, and digital services.

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Gilmore’s work remains highly relevant today, particularly in:

• customer experience

• digital services

• service innovation

• relationship building

• personalization

• and the development of strong customer and citizen experiences

His perspectives emphasize how value is created through the interaction between people, services, and experiences—not through technology alone.