San Francisco 2006
Summary
Customer Centricity and Data-Driven Marketing
Introduction and Context
The 2006 seminar focused on what makes Silicon Valley the world’s most productive innovation region. Over five intensive days, we met with speakers from academia and industry who demonstrated how technology, capital, and collaboration form the foundation for continuous innovation. The key takeaway was that innovation here is not a project—it is a culture.
Program Overview
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The program covered five main days of professional sessions:
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Day 1: Introduction to Silicon Valley – the innovation ecosystem
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Day 2: Business models and entrepreneurship
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Day 3: Open innovation and the interaction between capital and expertise
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Day 4: Technology, data, and customer experience
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Day 5: Marketing in the digital economy
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Key Professional Themes
The seminar demonstrated how innovation emerges when ideas are shared across disciplines, companies, and institutions. Concepts such as Open Innovation (Chesbrough), Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (Engel), and Information-Intensive Marketing (Zettelmeyer) provided a comprehensive understanding of how knowledge, capital, and culture reinforce one another. It was all fascinating.
Case Studies
Through case presentations from companies and academic institutions, we saw how theory is translated into practice. IBM and Santa Clara University highlighted the value of data-driven customer engagement, while UC Berkeley presented methods for connecting research with commercialization.
Reflections and Discussion:
The group discussions focused on how Norwegian organizations can draw inspiration from Silicon Valley without simply copying its model. We recognized the need to build trust, collaboration, and a culture of learning as a framework for innovation—rather than believing that technology alone creates change.
International Perspectives
The speakers drew connections between global competition, academic openness, and capital mobility. The international environment of the Bay Area was highlighted as a key competitive advantage—demonstrating that diversity and international recruitment strengthen the capacity for innovation.
What We Took Home With Us
The participants returned home with a clearer understanding of how value creation requires a culture of sharing and collaboration. The concept of “learning by sharing” remained a key takeaway—both professionally and personally.
Relevance Today
Many of the themes from 2006 have become even more important. Open innovation, cross-functional teams, and the use of data as a basis for decision-making are now at the very foundation of digital transformation. The seminar therefore stands as an early and clear indication of the shift we are now living through.
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 Silicon Valley Edge: A Habitat for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
This book explores why Silicon Valley developed into the world’s leading innovation region. Through research, business cases, and analysis, the authors show how technology, entrepreneurship, capital, universities, and collaboration create a unique culture of innovation driven by continuous renewal.
