THE WORLD NEEDS NORDIC INNOVATION

by Robert Strand, PhD, Executive Director of the Center for Responsible Business

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF INNOVATION? I asked myself this question a lot in advance of 2020’s Nordic Innovation Summit last May. I’ll return to this question.

I have dedicated my professional life to understanding Nordic global leadership in sustainability and building resilient societies—and what lessons America can draw from these Nordic experiences. Barbro Osher, the Swedish Consul General in San Francisco, gave me the nickname “Mr. Nordic,” so when I was invited to emcee 2020’s annual Nordic Innovation Summit alongside Birger Steen, Mr. Nordic happily accepted.

Though held virtually due to COVID-19, the Nordic Innovation Summit 2020 presented by Ericsson successfully brought together innovation leaders from the Nordic region, the Pacific Northwest and beyond to share insights, build new relationships, explore opportunities for collaboration, and inspire new ways of thinking. Founded in 2018 –by the Museum with the support of Steen, a principal at Summit Equity and Museum Trustee, the summit has flourished since.

Built around four core Nordic values of openness, social justice, connection to nature, and innovation, the National Nordic Museum is the natural home for the Nordic Innovation Summit. The Nordic value of innovation is of course a focus for the summit: but when we talk about Nordic innovation, we are inherently also talking about innovation with the other values. Nordic innovation is about making the world a more just and sustainable place. Nordic innovation is about tackling the world’s most pressing challenges.

So back to that question: WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF INNOVATION? As we entered the 2020 Nordic Innovation Summit amidst a global pandemic, heightened social unrest, and rising global temperatures, it became clear to me that the purpose of innovation is to meet real needs of the world. It simply has to be. Anything else would be a colossal waste of precious time and talent.

And this is precisely what Nordic innovation does. Nordic innovation meets real needs of the world.

As we kicked off the summit, I shared a story about Nordic innovation meeting real needs that is most relevant in these challenging times. Just before the summit, The Atlantic ran an article titled “The Doc- tor Who Had to Innovate or Else.” That doctor was Danish physician Bjørn Ibsen. Bjørn Ibsen’s innovation—a new way to use positive pressure to save polio patients in the 1950s—was born out of a real need. At that time, negative pressure ventilation was used for polio patients to breathe—a procedure which required use of the iron lung, a device invented in the 1920s. In the 1950s, when polio was one of the most serious communicable childhood diseases, the entire country of Denmark had only a single iron lung. Without iron lungs at his disposal, Ibsen innovated a new practice, involving hand pumping ventilators and using positive pressure, that would come to save hundreds of lives in Denmark.

Drawing from Ibsen’s learnings, the Swedish company Engström invented a machine that pumped ventilations mechanically the following year. That machine is the basis for the modern ventilator. Ventilators used around the world to save lives today—from COVID-19 and other diseases—are built upon this Nordic innovation. A real need driving innovation. That’s Nordic innovation.

When we talk about the real needs of the world, we are also inherently talking about the increasingly urgent need to address our world’s greatest sustainability challenges. This brings us back to the Nordics, as the very definition of sustainability has deep Nordic roots. Former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland chaired the Brundtland Commission, which generated the timeless definition of sustainable development that we know and still use today: sustainable development is “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Launched in 2015, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals—or SDGs—serve as a globally-recognized framework that brings together the world’s most pressing challenges. Reduced Inequalities, Good Health and Well-Being, No Poverty, Climate Action, Clean Water and Sanitation, Zero Hunger, Gender Equality, Quality Education, and Affordable and Clean Energy are a few of the seventeen SDGs.

Nordic innovation tackles SDGs head on. It’s therefore unsurprising that the Nordics are global SDG leaders who regularly dominate the annual SDG Index. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland topped the most recent 2020 index, and Nordic countries have routinely taken the top three places since the index’s inception in 2015.

This is not to say that Nordic work is done. The young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg reminds us that when it comes to urgent challenges like climate change and overconsumption, the whole world needs rapid improvement, including the Nordics. But a Nordic approach rooted in the Nordic values of openness, social justice, connection to nature, and innovation to meet real needs of the world represents our best hope to effectively address our greatest global challenges.

In my upcoming book, Sustainable Vikings: What the Nordics Can Teach Us about Reimagining American Capitalism, I begin with the bold statement “I believe the Nordics can save the world.” I truly believe this. But this is not meant as convenient praise: I offer this as a call to duty.

The world needs leadership. The world needs inspiration. The world needs hope and proof that societal, environmental, and economic well-being can go hand in hand.

The world needs Nordic innovation. And, fortunately, the annual Nordic Innovation Summit brings Nordic innovation to the world.

September

Photo by Oakie on Unsplash.