Innovasjon Norge – matt finch / mechanical dolphin

“Just Waiting for the Locusts, Really”: OECD Government After Shock Interviews with Innovation Norway & National Library of Australia

October 7, 2020October 5, 2020Mechanical Dolphin

“Smoke, fire, hail, and pestilence…we’re just waiting for the locusts, really” – the wry and insightful Marie-Louise Ayres, who heads the National Library of Australia in Canberra, talked to me about guiding her unique federal institution through the many challenges faced by the Australian capital in 2020.

You can hear what Marie-Louise had to say on the OECD’s Government After Shock podcast.

I also spoke with Håkon Haugli, CEO of Innovation Norway, a state body which promotes sustainable growth and exports for Norwegian businesses through capital and expertise. Håkon talks about moving to a digital workplace, the struggle to preserve multilateralism, and embracing the messy nature of innovation. His episode of the podcast can be found here.

“Schools and/or screens”: scenarios for the digitalisation of education in Norway

March 10, 2020Mechanical Dolphin

In 2019, the University of Oslo contracted me for a short foresight project exploring the future of education in Norway, with a focus on digitalisation of learning.

We convened a small group of researchers, education professionals, and other stakeholders to create three scenarios: plausible visions of 2050 which challenge current assumptions about the futures which might await.

The scenarios explored questions of self-directed learning, hypersurveillance, financial and ecological collapse, as well as shifts in politics at all levels from the global to the local.

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After the scenarios were produced, scholars from Norway and overseas provided responses, examining present-day issues which were highlighted by our visions of the future.

The aim of the scenarios was to enrich the futures thinking of two projects at the University, one exploring Screen Cultures, and the other investigating the Nordic Social Model.

You can download the full scenario document as a PDF file here, or read a short slide deck summarising the project, also as a PDF, here.

The Future Sound of Libraries, Revisited: Interview with Martin Kristoffer Bråthen

November 12, 2018November 12, 2018Mechanical Dolphin

Today I’m joined by Norway’s Martin Kristoffer Bråthen. Martin is head of innovation and product development at Biblioteksentralen, the cooperative business which supplies libraries across Norway with collection materials, equipment and services.

Prior to that, Martin worked at Deichman Bibliotek, the Oslo Public Library, in a range of project roles. During that time, he wrote a robust defence of public libraries in the age of the e-book in response to a comment by a senior Norwegian arts editor that “digitisation leaves public libraries on the scrapheap of history.”

The Norwegian Library Innovation Exchange @innovasjonnorge

October 25, 2018Mechanical Dolphin

How do you get a whole nation thinking about the challenges which lie ahead of it?

How can you help a community to solve seemingly intractable problems?

Which institutions need to be part of the discussion about society’s future directions?

I visited Norway this week to speak and run a workshop at the national library conference, #biblkonf2018. I asked these questions, and more, with a focus on how libraries might serve the innovation agenda articulated by Norway’s innovation agency, Innovasjon Norge. (You can see slides from the keynote here).

Norway of course has a very obvious mission ahead: “What do we do when the oil runs out?” #biblkonf2018 pic.twitter.com/AwER1Y8fIq

— Matt Finch (@DrMattFinch) October 24, 2018

Today I want to focus on one idea, which comes from the work of the British innovation agency Innovate UK. Read more →