Viking Magazine - August 2019 - 22

innovator
profile
johan brand believes the human
brain is as important as a computer when
it comes to business. " The human element
in anything is creativity, " says the creative
technology entrepreneur and founding
partner of We Are Human (wearehuman.cc),
a company committed to building purposedriven
organizations that strive for social
and commercial impact. " When companies
are doing tasks that can be performed by
computers, they will eventually be performed
by computers or machines. But when you are
creative and asking questions and opening up
bigger opportunities, that is very much driven
by the human endeavor. "
Growing up on the coastal side of Oslo, it
was around 1985 when Brand's father brought
the fi rst Mac computer into the home. It was a
wanted to do exactly the same thing I did as a
kid, " he says of leaving business school after
one semester to pursue the arts. " I wanted
to use creativity and technology together to
answer questions and pose questions to society.
That is the foundation of how I crafted my
own education. "
// JOHAN BRAND //
founding partner, we are human
tool Brand used to complete assignments and
projects in a Norwegian school system that
pushed students to be responsible for their
own learning, a pedagogical point of view that
has guided Brand his entire life. " I realized I
22 VIKING AUGUST 2019 sonsofnorway.com
The belief that " great learning comes
from asking great questions " would also
become the springboard for one of his most
successful companies to date, Kahoot! In
2011, Brand and his partners were exploring
the idea that the mobile phone would one day
metaphorically become the remote control for
your life. " We realized it is within learning
we can have the most impact, we can ask
the biggest questions, " he says. Applying the
internationally familiar concept of multiplechoice
quizzing, they created a
game-based learning platform that
now is used by more than 2 billion
players around the world.
" Nordic companies are
amazingly innovative, they're
amazingly motivated to make
the world better for others,
but not necessarily so good at
capitalizing on it and building a big
business, " says Brand, a passionate
advocate for helping Norwegian
companies achieve visibility on
a global scale through projects
like The Nordic Connection and
EntrepreneurShipOne. This latest
endeavor serves as a meeting place
for entrepreneurs, policymakers
and businesses to innovate-
literally on a ship (a zero-emission,
refi tted 1986 X-Yacht sailboat, to
be exact), not only highlighting
the sea's untapped potential as
an economic resource, but also
drawing analogies between sailing
and entrepreneurship.
" There's one thing you can learn from sailing
as entrepreneurs: You have to work with the
elements, " Brand says. " You can't beat the
wind, but you can learn how to sail. "
-TAYLOR HUGO
PHOTO BY BJØRN ROSENQVIST
http://www.wearehuman.cc http://www.sonsofnorway.com
Viking Magazine - August 2019

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