– Working hard on getting uncomfortable and learning from the best

Published 20.06.2017
Once again it was a great pleasure having Justin Ferrell from Stanford d.school back in Bergen to visit the media cluster. This time to work with our startups.

Think Outside was one of the startups participating, a company working on innovative information solutions for tourists visiting Norway, aiming to turn small destinations into a big experience.

CEO and founder, Monica Vaksdal, brought her team of three to the workshop, hoping to learn new tools and skills to further develop their business. Think Outside joined the media cluster this year, and are already taking good advantage of the different offers and opportunities in the cluster.

Monica Vaksdal from Think Outside. 

– This was a good opportunity, and we were quick to sign up the whole team. We were so pleased with the output and value. I really like the way Justin Ferrell challenged us to look at and frame problems. Instead of asking us to redesign an existing solution, he challenged us to define the real problem and find a creative and new way to think. Very inspiring, Vaksdal said.
 


Effective and useful tools  
Justin Ferrell has a close connection to the media cluster, and has on several occasions worked with various companies within the cluster and with NCE Media, both in developing organizations, and also running design thinking workshops. And the coach’s methods are certainly appreciated by the participants.

– Combining these tools with effective communication can help us create a better and more innovative product and convey our message in a way that appeals to and inspires the listeners. I also thought that the empathy part with storytelling was extremely powerful. I will definitely sign up again on his next visit to the media cluster, Vaksdal said. 

Justin Ferrell with the participants full attention. 

Ferrell is a former journalist for The Washington Post, most recently as the Director of Digital, Mobile & New Product Design. He brought the first mobile designers and programmers into the newsroom, and enabled collaborative teams of reporters, editors and developers to create groundbreaking work. He designed the investigative series “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, as well as four other Pulitzer finalists.

Ferrell now leads the d.school’s three-year media experiments project, a portfolio of experiential prototypes at the intersection of digital media and community action. The program helps entrepreneurial professionals learn and apply Design Thinking to organization design, to create and spread behavior-driven systemic change.

 

More photos from the workshop: 

 Kristine Ullaland, Zero Waste



Jan Terje Espeland, Bergensia

 

Tone Skår, Bergen Teknologioverføring (BTO) and Jørn Hammer, Den Lille Gartner

 

Tone Skår, BTO

 

From left to right: Kristin Lerfald Grostad, Swancy  and Deborah Karlsen, Think Outside

 

Thor Nikolai Holum, Violet AS

Deborah Karlsen, Think Outside

 

Bjørn Kloster, Think Outside and Hilde Holdhus, Greensight.

 

Bjørn Kloster, Think Outside