Is the combination of video games and bar important to create 10,000 new technology jobs in Trondheim? Yes, says Business Council in town. Ehh, says innovation research.
– there is a bar and play here because there are social objects that invite that there should be a meeting – like the water cooler in any office environment, says CEO Marius Thorvaldsen (39) in Work Work – a cross between a workplace and a bar stocked with board games, table games, pinball, video games , video games, really old video games and unfinished games.
- Working partnerships in Munkegata in Trondheim.
- Opened officially on 5 January.
- the name is a reference to a frequently used phrase among lavkastearbeiderne with orcs, called peons, in the hugely popular Warcraft franchise.
- Run through Quiet Just as, where CEO Marius Thorvaldsen own 17.5 percent and Chairman Borgar Ljosland 12.5. The remaining ownership is split between six other partners.
- Thorvaldsen ran for over 15 years one of Trondheim’s most popular venues, passable.
- Ljosland was in 2001, one in five, with start up the small iT company Falanx in Trondheim. The company stands behind the design of the world’s best-selling graphics processor, which according to TU today’s most mobile and tablet in the world.
- The Company was in 2006 sold to British Arm for approximately 170 million. Negotiations on the sale took place at a bar.
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Work Work opened in January, as the latest addition to a growing number of joint ventures in Norway (see graphic). In the floors sits game developers. Below is the bar.
On the surface there are games, beer and fun. Under there is the idea of chance meeting where the investor, entrepreneur and the talented technologist meet and there by magic occurs something magical: innovation.
It is a truism in entrepreneurial environments. However happens this type of meetings in real life?
the party at the Minister
not only do they, one sees the story has chance meeting laid the groundwork for some of the largest industrial adventure, according to Chairman Borgar Ljosland (38) in the Framework Framework.
Like when industrialist Sam Eyde in 1903 sitting at the table to minister and future prime minister Gunnar Knudsen. Eyde are looking for something that can take nitrogen from the air to produce fertilizer. He needs the biggest lightning a human can produce.
So begins inventor Kristian Birkeland, who also sits at the table, talking about his unsuccessful weapons experiment: an electric cannon which shorted and ended up firing an arc – a giant spark. It is a crucial and chance encounter on the road against the Norwegian Hydro.
– Trondheim is full of Kristian Birkeland’s. And have a few Sam Eyde is. Work Work is an attempt to increase the number of possible meetings, said Ljosland.
At that moment Håkon Bertheussen the door, Wordfeud creator if gaming company has given him 70 million crowns (total profit before tax) between 2012 and 2014.
Also the other big game success from Norway in recent years, “Fun Run”, has originates from Trondheim and NTNU. Now the region will both ensure that more is going and that more will be.
Doubling of technology jobs
Chamber of Commerce in Trondheim – with politicians in the back – set itself the goal of doubling the number of technology jobs in the region of 10,000 to 20,000 by 2025.
the turnover should up from 14 to 28 billion. (article continues below).
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Meeting space as Work Work is an explicit part of the strategy to get it.
– there are many important pieces that must be in place for it to go, but this is certainly one of them, says Herbjørn Skjervold (64), who leads the work on behalf of a new advisory board of business association.
Ordinarily he is senior partner at the venture capital company ProVenture, which invests in new technology companies.
Anyone who comes into the bar will also be able to test games developed on the upper floor.
Beyond creating more meetings between entrepreneurs, investors and technologists is also an idea to Work Work that the average man in the street can have a much more valuable role to play in the future of technology companies be developed than we have understood until now.
Mainstreaming of innovation
Thorvaldsen called it a “democratization of issues”, a general application of innovation.
In the there is also a critique of the initiatives for innovation today ends up as a meeting place for little more than a limited group of people who either identify themselves with gründersubkulturen or has an affiliation with a research environment.
– Whenever should be something called entrepreneurship or innovation, configure some walls where Watching put money into it. But one should not build something that is closed. Plant yourself in the middle of the city’s nightlife, said Ljosland.
Trondheim / Oslo: – there has been a tendency in Norway to believe that only one warehouse network, then it becomes innovation. The problem arises if the hyped to be the engine itself, says Professor of Innovation and Economic Organisation Per Ingvar Olsen (58) BI.
Olsen is regularly in Palo Alto, California. Palo Alto is one of the economic centers in Silicon Valley and an important inspiration for the idea of the general make innovation by allowing bars and cafes to be the meeting point between investors, technology companies and working talents. But the crucial detail, explains Olsen, is to understand that it is the supply of the three components that make meeting place works – not only meeting place in itself.
– Do you not content, torque and environment bottom , you have nothing, says Olsen.
– have Trondheim it?
– Partially, responding Olsen.
– Trondheim a large tech environment, but a thin financing environment. Investor lack there is a much bigger problem than cafe defect.
Olsen has simultaneously sense for Work Works idea to draw bargåere into beta testing of the game.
– It is part of a new trend is to find effective and cheap opportunities to test innovative solutions and products in a real audience – thereby getting faster and cheaper answer.
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