Monday, March 26, 2012

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.

Thursday, March 01, 2012

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.