Dr. David Nordfors has won the Swedish Bay Area Achievement Award for Most Beneficial Exchange. He was awarded for his work in innovation journalism at Stanford University. The Innovation Journalism Fellowships have been on-going for several years and have led to improved networks and strengthening a long-lasting relationship between journalists in Silicon Valley, Sweden and other countries with the Innovation Journalism Fellowships.
By: Katarina Bennich, SACC San Francisco
The Swedish Bay Area Achievement Award is an annual event, celebrating and honouring the people who further Swedish culture and business in the Bay Area. The jury’s decision to give the prize to Dr. Nordfors was based primarily on his success in combining two different fields, the academic with the business world. The recognition was also for his great achievement in promoting Sweden and for his continual efforts to improve the bonds between both countries and the commerce between them.
The award at the Swedish Bay Area Achievement Award means a lot to Dr. Nordfors:
- It was amazing to win the award. When I first came to Silicon Valley as part of the VINNOVA program we were the first to invest in free independent journalism as a part of the innovation economy. The idea was brand new and there were no established practices or knowledge within the field. As always with groundbreaking approaches, it takes time to become accepted. Today we have a Stanford Center and this Award truly shows that we have succeeded.
The meaning of Innovation Journalism
Dr. Nordfors is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Stanford Centre for Innovation and Communication. He started the first innovation journalism initiatives in Sweden in 2003, the same year he coined the concept of ‘Innovation Journalism’. The following year he moved to Silicon Valley, California, to start the development and establishment of the concept and the community of Innovation Journalism in actuality. When he first started, he did a Google search on the term ‘Innovation journalism’. He then got 0 hits. Today it gets over 533,000. But what does Innovation Journalism really mean?
- Innovation will often effect peoples life to a greater extent than, for example, much new legislation. It has a greater impact on everyone’s lives, just look at what the iPhone has done. I realized that communication was a key component for innovation. The innovation of the Internet is one good example, 20 years after it was invented, less than 1 % of the population was actually using it, says Dr. Nordfors.
At the core of the project is to encourage journalists in Sweden and elsewhere to develop expertise in covering how innovation happens. That is one segment that normally is not covered in the newspapers. Instead they are mostly focused and strictly divided into the fields of politics, science, economy, technology, culture and business. Innovation journalism and the process of innovation cover a combination of all of the above mentioned fields and therefore require a change in the world of journalism. It is not to be confused with innovation within journalism. By following the process of innovation you can say something about the future. According to Dr. Nordfors innovation is basically:
- The process of creating and introducing new value to society.
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