San Francisco Seminar 2006
Day 1
Participating in the San Francisco 2006 Seminar was both a professional and personal milestone. Over the course of a week of lectures, company visits, and discussions, I gained insight into how American organizations approach innovation, technology, and customer experience.
Introduction and Context
The seminar in San Francisco in March 2006 marked an academic highlight of the Innovation and Commercialization Program.
After several years of theoretical and practical approaches to innovation, entrepreneurship, and digital transformation, this seminar provided a direct encounter with the ecosystem that has shaped modern business: Silicon Valley.
Day 1 began with an introduction by BI and Peder Inge Furseth, who reminded us that the purpose was not simply 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 within networks that drive technological development forward?
Program Overview
-
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
Key Academic Themes
Innovation as a Social and Economic Process
Andrew Hargadon (UC Davis) introduced one of the day’s key perspectives: innovation is not the result of individual genius, but of networks and connections between ideas, people, and practices.
He introduced the concept of technology brokering—where innovators act as connecting points between industries and technologies.
Hargadon showed how companies such as IDEO and 3M succeed because of their ability to combine knowledge across disciplines, and how innovation is, in reality, about reorganizing existing solutions in new ways.
From Vision to Product
Phillip Gordon explored how an idea can move from concept to a commercial product.
His presentation 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 they fail to find their market or launch too early.
The Silicon Valley Ecosystem
John Freeman described Silicon Valley as a self-reinforcing ecosystem in which 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 failure is seen as an investment in learning.
Entrepreneurship in Practice
Jaz Banga shared practical experiences from Feeva, a company that developed technology for targeted internet advertising and wireless communication. He described how entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley often need to combine technological insight with the ability to build trust and attract capital, and how the rapid pace of the technology market requires fast decision-making 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 cross-disciplinary collaboration and continuous knowledge sharing—a model that many organizations have since tried to replicate.
Feeva (Banga)
A practical example of early-stage innovation, where the company sought to commercialize technology related to Wi-Fi and the personalization of digital communication. Feeva illustrated how business models and technology must evolve in parallel, and how market maturity is critical to success.
Reflections and Discussion:
The discussions following the presentations focused on the differences between Norway and the United States—particularly in terms of financing, culture, and acceptance of risk.
One important realization was that Norway often lacks the “invisible glue” connecting academia, capital, and business that makes Silicon Valley unique.
Several participants also emphasized the need for innovation management as a discipline, not merely as an ideal.
International Perspectives
Silicon Valley was understood as a global reference point for innovation, but also as a system built on conditions that cannot easily be replicated.
The lecturers emphasized that the value lies not in imitating the model, but in translating its principles into national contexts: trust, openness, networks, and learning through practice.
What Did We Take Home?
-
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.
-
Leading innovation requires patience, trust, and a willingness to fail.
Relevance Today
In 2025, Hargadon’s theory of technology brokering and Freeman’s descriptions of innovation ecosystems seem more relevant than ever. Cross-disciplinary collaboration, open innovation, and cooperation across sectors have become fundamental success factors. In recent years, many Norwegian organizations have embraced precisely this kind of thinking—across the public sector, industry, and digital commerce.
Peder Inge Furseth
Peder Inge Furseth was a key academic driving force behind the San Francisco seminars and played an important role in making the encounter with Silicon Valley relevant to Norwegian and European organizations. Through his role as a professor at BI Norwegian Business School and as academic director of the program, he helped participants place the presentations within a broader context—one in which technology, innovation, business development, and people had to be understood together.
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 with practical challenges and opportunities facing Norwegian organizations. He helped translate Silicon Valley’s ideas and ways of working into a
Nordic context where collaboration, trust, and long-term value creation play a central role.
Throughout the seminar series, he served as an important bridge between research, business, and technology. For many participants, he therefore became more than an academic leader—he was also a mentor who inspired them to think differently about innovation, digitalization, and commercialization.
Learn more about Peder Inge Furseth here
From Studies and Seminars to Today’s Knowledge Hub
The studies, seminars, and academic trips documented on this page form part of the knowledge base behind The Invisible Capital. Topics such as customers, technology, innovation, digitalization, and value creation have been part of this journey for several decades — while these fields have continued to evolve.
At The Invisible Capital, we continue exploring these questions through dedicated knowledge series. Here, earlier theory, research, and experience are connected with newer knowledge, emerging technologies, and today’s challenges facing people and organizations.
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 put into use. The series on innovation traces the field from Schumpeter to modern innovation research and explores incremental, radical, disruptive, open, and user-driven innovation.
→ Explore the Innovation series
The Customer
The customer is not simply the recipient of what an organization produces. In a competitive market, the customer is a decisive factor in whether an organization actually succeeds in creating value. The series on the customer explores customer orientation, customer insight, customer experience, satisfaction, loyalty, trust, and the human interactions that shape the customer relationship.
→ Explore the Customer series
Value Creation
What does it really mean to create value — and who creates it? The Value Creation series moves from economic theory and influential thinkers to a broader understanding of how people, knowledge and skills, institutions, organizations, and the public sector contribute to value creation.
→ Explore the Value Creation series
Digitalization
Digitalization has evolved from individual technologies into a fundamental part of how organizations operate and create value. The Digitalization from A to Z series traces this evolution through the internet, the web, e-commerce, search, UX, social media, mobile, omnichannel, cloud, data, platforms, and digital transformation — leading up to today’s AI-first era.
→ Explore the Digitalization from A to Z series
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence represents the next chapter in the digital evolution. In our dedicated AI knowledge hub, we explore how artificial intelligence works, how AI finds and uses information, how it evaluates sources and websites, and what this development could mean for people, organizations, and value creation.
→ Explore the articles on Artificial Intelligence
Recommended Reading
The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
A key book on 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.
