Cross-Cutting Professional Themes and Key Insights from the
San Francisco Seminar 2008
Commercializing Innovation – From Research to Global Market
The San Francisco program in 2008 was more than four individual days of professional learning. It was a comprehensive encounter with an innovation ecosystem in transition—just as digitalization, the platform economy, customer experience, and global organization were beginning to converge.
This section brings together the most important professional themes across all the presentations, company visits, and academic contributions. Here, the bigger picture becomes clear: what 2008 was really about, and why the seminar coincided with a global turning point.
A. Innovation as an Ecosystem –
The Silicon Valley Model (Berkeley)
San Francisco 2008 offered a rare glimpse into how innovation emerges when academia, capital, culture, and entrepreneurship function as an interconnected system.
At the core of the Berkeley model are:
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Talent mobility: People move quickly between projects, disciplines, and companies.
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Access to capital: Risk-tolerant capital that expects growth rather than short-term profitability.
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A culture of failure: “Fail fast” as a mechanism for learning, not as a form of punishment.
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Academia as an engine: Universities that generate ideas, networks, and entrepreneurs.
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Network-based structures: Innovation happens through relationships, not within departments.
This way of thinking runs through much of the seminar—even when the topics are technology, customer experience, or outsourcing.
The Silicon Valley model serves as the foundation underlying it all.
B. The Emergence of the Platform Economy – Google’s Logic (Early Web 2.0)
2008 represents an early moment in the history of the platform economy. Google was not just a search engine—it was an ecosystem under construction.
Key characteristics of the platform logic Google presented included:
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Network effects: The more users, the greater the value.
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Data-driven innovation: Services improve through user data, not simply through added features.
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Interconnected product portfolios: Search → Ads → Maps → Gmail → Video.
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The 70–20–10 model: Structured experimentation with built-in risk.
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Scalable platforms: Technology that drives marginal costs close to zero.
This was valuable insight for the participants: platform logic was still in its early stages. The global dominance of Google, Facebook, and Amazon had not yet been established—but the seeds had been planted.
2008 was the year when the platform economy moved from theory to practice.
C. The New Customer Experience – Visual Communication, Data, and Global Organization
While Google represented the data-driven platform, Adobe Scene7, Forrester Research, and 24/7 Customer demonstrated three other dimensions of the same development:
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Visual experience (Adobe Scene7)
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360° product images
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zoom and configuration
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rich media in e-commerce
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This was the precursor to the product visualization now found in nearly every major online store.
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Consumer data and multichannel behavior (comScore / EMC²)
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customers move seamlessly between physical and digital commerce
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research online → purchase offline
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early click-to-brick economy
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This marked the beginning of omnichannel thinking.
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Global customer engagement and outsourcing (24/7 Customer)
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process innovation, not just cost reduction
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CLM: Customer Lifecycle Management
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high-quality global delivery
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This laid the foundation for customer service to later become a strategic function.
The common thread is clear:
Customer experience became a system, not a channel.
D. The Precursors of Omnichannel – From Multichannel to Cross-Channel
IBM Almaden, Oxford, and Santa Clara University extended the digital perspective beyond platforms and experiences:
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Multichannel: Parallel presence without integration
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Cross-channel: Interaction between channels
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Early omnichannel: Continuity throughout the customer journey
IBM presented four C’s that would later become industry standards:
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Choice – the customer chooses the channel
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Consistency – the same experience regardless of channel
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Context – relevant information at the right time
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Continuity – seamless movement across channels
This later became the foundation for modern CRM, loyalty programs, digital synchronization, and customer experience architecture.
In 2008, this was new. Today, it is the foundation for almost every major brand.
E. Global Innovation Cultures – the United States, Europe, and the Nordic Countries
San Francisco 2008 also showed that innovation is shaped by society:
United States:
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high risk tolerance
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venture capital
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rapid iteration
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commercialization before predictability
Europe:
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structure
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regulation
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processes
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greater emphasis on quality and stability
The Nordic countries:
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trust
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collaboration
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flat organizational structures
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small markets that provide room for experimentation
This three-way comparison made it possible to reflect on how Norwegian and Scandinavian innovation capabilities differ.
Svein-Egil Nielsen (Innovation Norway) described the Nordic countries as:
“Small markets that can test, learn, and scale faster than large economies.”
F. The Integrated Perspective – What Connects All the Professional Themes?
When we look at the seminar as a whole, the connection is clear:
Platforms (Google)
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Customer experience (Adobe Scene7, Forrester, 24/7)
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Global organization (outsourcing, digital value chains)
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Innovation ecosystems (Berkeley/Silicon Valley)
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Channel integration (IBM, Oxford, Santa Clara)
They all point toward the same conclusion:
Innovation happens when technology, people, data, and organizations come together to create one integrated customer experience.
This was the essence of San Francisco 2008—the key professional insight that was not tied to any single day, but to the entire period.
Relevance Today
Many of the findings from 2008 form the foundation of today’s strategies in both the private and public sectors:
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Customer journey mapping builds directly on the work of Reynolds and Kalyanam.
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IBM Almaden’s model lives on in omnichannel architecture and CRM solutions.
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Innovation Norway still applies the principle of “Norway as a testbed.”
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Virtual ecosystems have evolved into the metaverse and immersive collaboration.
Day 4 therefore stands as a milestone—when technology, strategy, and culture were brought together into an integrated view of innovation.
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
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams show how the internet, collaboration, and digital networks are changing the way organizations create innovation, products, and services. The book explains how openness, sharing, co-creation, and global ecosystems have become key drivers of the modern digital economy.
