Bjarne Uldal is a brand & business innovator who, over the last 25 years, has been involved in more than 30 start-ups, both as an investor, business developer and brand consultant.  Marrying a deep knowledge of branding with a hands-on approach to entrepreneurship, Bjarne has earned a reputation as a creative, commercially oriented person, who’s always on the lookout for points of differentiation that can be accentuated by compelling storytelling.

Bjarne is one of the co-founders of Nordic Edge, the official Norwegian innovation cluster on smarter cities and communities, and the organizer of the Nordic Edge Expo – the largest annual conference and exhibition in the Nordics on Smart City trends, methodology, new innovation and technology.

In his capacity of being the Chief Innovation Officer at Nordic Edge, Bjarne is responsible for establishing innovation partnerships with companies, organizations and academic institutions around Europe, in China and in the US. Bjarne has also been the main facilitator of the process leading up to the launch of the national Smart Roadmap for Smart and Sustainable Cities and Communities last year. Furthermore Bjarne acts as a facilitator and advisor to a number of cities and municipalities who are determined to build smarter and more sustainable communities.

Kim has a background with Urban development in Denmark and Urban Management in the Netherlands. The last five years he has worked with smart city strategies and smart city initiatives for the City of Copenhagen in Copenhagen Solutions Lab. Kim combines his experience from previous jobs into transforming the smart city visions and strategies of Copenhagen into real solutions. Kim is, among other things, member of the board for the Danish smart city network for organizations in Denmark and is also founding partner and chairman of the Nordic Smart City Network with 20 Nordic Cities.

Kaisa Spilling (MSc. Econ) works as a Development Manager at Forum Virium Helsinki, a city owned innovation company. She is an innovation accelerator with + 10 years experience with cities, digitalisation & urban innovation. Her expertise lies in public-private-people collaboration and business development. She has been driving innovation platform development in Helsinki’s Innovation Districts, contributing to the national city network 6Aika and the Nordic Smart Cities Network.

Gunnar Edwin Crawford is head of Stavanger Smart City, innovating across public-private boundaries, co-creating the smart city of the future.

Gunnar has extensive hands-on experience with innovation and development within the fields of welfare technology, smart homes and smart cities.

He believes strongly in citizen involvement and uses the power of the smart city team to challenge and evolve the democratic processes of today.

He is a patent holder, and winner of a CES Innovation award. He has contributed in several EU projects, including two Horizon 2020 projects – Triangulum (www.triangulum-project.eu) and Invade (http://h2020invade.eu/).

Crawford’s professional background is within ICT, energy and innovation. Gunnar is co-author of the book “Creating Disruptive Ecosystems” (2016 – http://www.disruptiveecosystems.com/ ), about the importance of understanding new digital business models when innovating digital systems and services.