Our methodology is built on a simple observation: the companies that scale fastest are not the ones with the best idea — they're the ones organised around a problem that industry, capital and research already need solved.
Every innovation system is built on one of two underlying logics. Norway's system — like most of the West's — is supply-driven. The countries that scale industrial technology fastest, from Israel to Sweden to China, are demand-driven.
A decade of fieldwork across four economies that sit at very different points on the supply/demand axis.
Deep capital markets, a strong university system and a culture of risk drive a highly effective supply-driven model for digital, scalable technology — with one striking exception: US defence innovation, which is almost entirely demand-driven.
National and provincial plans define which value chains to build. State enterprises, infrastructure spending and selective market-opening mobilise entrepreneurs and capital around those chains — with competition intensifying only once a chain matures.
The Yozma programme replaced idea-support with problem-support: the state co-invests in venture funds without taking a return, giving investors double the upside and half the downside — while industry and defence define the problems worth solving.
Long-term, competent industrial owners — the Wallenberg sphere among them — work in close, trust-based coordination with the state on major technology programmes, from automation to defence.
Before a technology company can scale, it needs to know what business it is really in, what position it should take in its value chain, and what its path to exit looks like. We call this designing the "equity story" — and it's the starting point of every engagement.
What business are we really in? We map the value chain the company sits in, and where the real margin — and the real power — actually sits within it.
What position should the company take? Different value configurations call for different building blocks, partners and capital structures — and different valuations.
How should the company be built, and toward what outcome? Bottom-up analysis tests and verifies the premises behind the equity story before it's put in front of partners.
We help find high-potential industrial partners aligned with the equity story, prepare the company for that dialogue, and — where there's mutual interest — get the legal architecture in place: LOIs, MoUs, SPAs and SHAs that turn interest into a staged, funded plan.
Drawn from our white paper on Norwegian industrial policy — the same principles we apply inside every portfolio company.
Shift the centre of gravity from funding ideas to solving defined, strategic problems.
Choose a small number of sectors where a global top-3 position is realistic, and align research, education and capital behind them.
The state's role is to share risk with private capital — not to pick winners or make commercial decisions itself.
Big companies should act as anchors for external innovation — formulating needs, not just optimising existing operations.
Fewer, larger programmes with a clear line from research through piloting to scale — not dozens of fragmented schemes.
A small, technocratic, non-politicised function to set direction and coordinate mission-oriented programmes over time.
Talk to us about our accelerator programmes or industrial orchestration advisory.
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