House on the moon and opera in the fjords

March 15th I attended the GROW innovation conference in Bergen for the second year. It was a day for inspiration and new perspectives.

Most refreshing I found the talk of the Swedish artist Mikael Genberg whose project is to build a little red house on the moon - Luna Resort. The project seems more likely to matrialize than I thought at first. In 2008 NASA gained interest in the project and invited him for a meeting. You can read about the project in his blog (swedish). Other interesting projects of his are the Woodpecker Hotel located in a tree in the central park of Stockholm, and a underwater hotel 3m below the surface of Lake Mälaren near Stockholm. He also has a underwater hotel project at Zanzibar in progress.

Using Business Model Canvas on startupweekend winners

Yesterday we had our second meetup in the Business Model User Group Bergen. First we got a presentation from the two winners of Bergen startupweekend VeiBingo and BringMe. Then we split in 4 teams and spent one hour challenging their business model, working with post-it notes on a big A0 Business Model Canvas. It was fun, and I think both startups came back with some new ideas on how to generate revenue and create value. It is such a simple tool, that makes it possible for a fairly random group of people to produce valuable results in 1 hour.