Interview in Att:ention

The Swedish magazine "Att:ention" published an interview with me on Innovation Journalism July 2006. The piece is written by Johan Jörgensen and Olle Corneer. Although a bit dated, I am posting it to the blog in order to make it available for reference. Att:ention is a monthly magazine made by Veckans Affärer, published by Bonniers Publishing house. Veckans Affärer is the largest Swedish business weekly.

Here is a PDF copy of the interview in the paper magazine: Attention%20interview.pdf

Translation in English:

The Visionary Modernizes Journalism
David Nordfors / The Researcher / Lives in: Palo Alto / Occupation: Runs a program in innovation journalism at the elite university Stanford in California / Background: Has done research in molecular quantum physics at Uppsala University [in Sweden]. Played keyboards in the rock band N-Liners and shared debut LP with Lustans Lakejer, Kaj Martin & Stick and others.

“It is innovation that is driving the economic growth today. The main reason for increased societal wealth is no longer that more people work more, or that machines are purchased in order to do more of the same work in shorter time. The improvements come instead from new ways for people to be productive, or that they produce new and more valuable things.
Innovation is not the same thing as invention. An invention can be a contraption in a cellar, known by nobody else than the inventor. Inventions can be made by individuals. An innovation always happens in a community. Something that happens in a community, something that is important for the community – that makes news.
My director general [at VINNOVA] Per Eriksson bought the idea and I started to work on a program to develop journalism as a key actor in innovation systems. Today we have collaboration with editors of many news rooms, spanning from Wall Street Journal and Fortune to Technology Review and Science.
I was myself a journalist for some years at the beginning of the 90s and had probably continued, if not I had been offered in February 1995 to take part in setting up the Knowledge Foundation [in Swedish: KK-stiftelsen / transl.] that, among other things, took care of the so called “IT Billion” [the Knowledge Foundation was in charge of spending more than one billion crowns - approx 135 million USD – on spreading the use of IT in Sweden / transl.]
After more than ten years pause as quantum physicist it is fun to be researcher again, although in a different topic.” (ATT)