New head of Swedish Innovation Agency is driven by data and design
An interview with Darja Isaksson
She’s founded two design agencies, is a member of Sweden’s National Innovation Council and since August 2018 head of the Swedish Innovation Agency VINNOVA. Why her appointment is seen as brave and forward-looking government decision shows the following interview with her, which the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation published in 2017.
Anyone who googles Darja Isaksson will find a whole collection of titles: digital expert, innovation strategist, change agent, concept developer, researcher, lecturer, inspirer, consultant, design agency founder….She has been selected as one of Sweden’s 15 leading super-talents (by Resumé magazine in 2013) and one of the country’s 12 most powerful opinion shapers and agent for social change.
She herself sometimes deflects the attention by tersely describing herself as “a tech nerd from Piteå”. But the truth is this: when Darja Isaksson waxes lyrical about the ongoing digital revolution nowadays she also has the government’s ear.
She is passionate about many solutions in the transport sector. Car and bicycle pools are one aspect but she also favours digital solutions that can link up supply, demand and various modes of transport.
Darja Isaksson was a board member of the Swedish Industrial Design Foundation, who talked with her about Sweden as an innovation nation and her perspective on design and digitalisation as driver for social change. Here an extract of the interview:
Darja, when you give lectures you often say that we’re living in fun and exciting times, when all the conditions exist for us to be able to save the planet. Please explain.
“The digital revolution is fundamentally remodelling society. It’s challenging our old concepts about everything from value to democracy, and it’s changing how we produce, consume and communicate. Data is giving us opportunities to organise ourselves in new ways — data is the raw material that we need to be able to extract and refine, just like ore and trees. The changes are creating growth but it’s important that this can be balanced by a development that is environmentally, financially and socially sustainable. One of the cornerstones is transparency and open platforms, which are the basis of innovation processes and business development. Things are happening very fast right now and this is influencing us as individuals, as citizens and as business entrepreneurs.”
But you also perceive some lurking dangers?
“Yes. The first stage of digitalisation is leading to greater efficiency, lower prices and increased consumption, which comprise a dangerous trend. Even today we’re consuming more than the planet can withstand. That’s why we must introduce environmental management measures and ensure that the efficiency gains we achieve are used to change our consumption patterns.
“In a global welfare system we should also have an equal right to optimised welfare. That’s one of my strongest driving forces. We’re not there yet, and it almost makes me lie awake at night. People who have the knowledge and opportunities will go abroad to get access to things like stem cell treatments etc. But we must find ways of broadening access to advanced treatments, not least now that global health insurance may soon be a fact. We’re maybe just a few years away from Facebook offering banking and insurance services. The only question is who sets the risk premiums and algorithms in such a system? And how egalitarian will it be? There’s a lot to think about on this issue.
“Another important aspect is everything to do with personal privacy and the individual’s right to data about him- or herself. Sure, we can store things like health data but we must agree on how we do it. Often it is the young countries such as Estonia that are the most digitally mature. It has legislation giving people real-time access to what data the authorities have on them.”
What is your role on the government’s National Innovation Council?
“When the National Innovation Council contacted me in 2015 I realised it was not about my formal platform: I’m not CEO of Ericsson or Volvo, or president of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology or Gothenburg University. But I have worked with various digitalisation themes and I like having lots of things going on and opportunities to move around the system. At our latest meeting, in mid-May, one topic we discussed was open data. That’s an area very close to my heart.”
What is Sweden’s strength as an innovation nation?
“We’re good at English, we are early adopters, and our population is highly connected digitally. It’s also possible to start a limited company here without risking your child’s education or your own health insurance. Sweden produces one percent of the world’s knowledge from less than one-thousandth of the world’s population…. We are ten million inhabitants who as a group are highly trend sensitive. If we decide to do something we have good possibilities of succeeding.”
What are the weaknesses?
“There must be proper leadership at all levels for the digital transformation to function. This is a really difficult process and there will be many failures. For example, in Sweden we have many management boards that are relatively immature when it comes to digitalisation.
“Our biggest problem is that we still don’t have the necessary structures. We’ve built a large system of silos, which every service designer knows. The money exists but not the national processes. Municipal self-government is a chain where a lot falls between the different areas of responsibility. Resources are being used wrongly and many people are abdicating their responsibility.”
What role does design have as a methodology in the digital transformation process?
“It is a totally decisive factor. We need to work with processes and cross-disciplinary combinations, to include people, and to put ourselves in the customers’ shoes. We also need to have standards and other forms of infrastructure so that the information can be linked up and create innovative strength.
“But we also need to consider that technology does not automatically take us where we want to go. As designers we also have a responsibility for the ethics and consequences. We can use prototypes when major things are to be transformed at the level of society but a degree of humility is required. More designers need to become interested in the institutional systems and learn more about them.”
What do you spend most of your work time on?
“In addition to being involved in projects and on councils and boards, I lecture and have commissions as a consultant. This always takes me into new contexts and sets of problems — which is an exciting part of the job and includes both gathering and transmitting information.
Previous interviews with you make it clear that you were interested in technology and design even as a child. Tell us more!
“My dad worked for the Swedish national telecom administration and what later became Telia Research. In his spare time he was an electronics inventor and at home we had a lab where my siblings and I could do things like weld circuit boards. My parents founded a company that sold test instruments to customers in the paper and steel industries throughout Europe. The rights were later sold to the USA, where the instrument was used in submarines.
“We got our first computer in the family as early as in 1982, and that was when I learned the basics of programming. I’ve always been interesting in technology, especially how it can be combined with my favourite subject, design. I wasn’t super popular in school when I was growing up but when I discovered the Internet, new worlds opened up and I came into contact with new people. That’s how digitalisation became a natural force in my private life as well.”
Author
The article is written by Lena Lidberg and is published in Swedish Design Research Journal no 1, 2017.
I thank Pia McAleenan for the collaboration.
