Where TED Talks meet Broadway

An outsider’s insider view of Iceland Innovation Week and their flagship climate conference, Ok, bye. Plus some mandatory adventuring and thoughts about what makes this a must-visit event during May 13–17, 2024

9 min readJul 6, 2023

“Piece of cake!” meaning: something easy to do and never referenced when describing the entrepreneurial journey

Introduction

As humans, we love metaphors and analogies. They are colorful ways to better explain things while making lectures and speeches more entertaining. You see it in politics, music, sports, and — of course — entrepreneurship. And for the self-serving sake of connecting something further below, I’d like to focus on baking-related analogies.

One of the most commonly used startup analogies draws parallels between entrepreneurship and baking a cake. This is explained by the necessity of needing the exact ingredients (e.g. building a team), precise measuring (e.g. data-driven strategy), and some levels of uncertainty (e.g. luck/serendipity). Elon Musk has used it, Steve Jobs has used it, and Guy Kawasaki has used it. You’ve probably even used it. It is tried, tested, and will be repeated.

This now “perfectly” transitions me into talking about Iceland.

“It’s a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake” — LazyTown

LazyTown was a popular children’s show on Nickelodeon during the early 2000s in the US, Iceland, and other countries.

Those of you who are familiar with the show, song, and or meme might be surprised to learn that LazyTown was an Icelandic show and a great entrepreneurial story worth Googling. While I don’t personally know the creator, Magnús Scheving (aka Sportacus), I do know he had tie-in products (e.g. bottled water, toys, etc.), multimedia, and dubbing in +30 languages for LazyTown very early on. So, I conclude that he is an entrepreneur with a global mindset to the core.

“Innovation is the compass that guides us towards a sustainable future amidst the ever-changing climate.” — Magnús Scheving

And those attributes (ref. entrepreneurial and global mindsets) are largely what many Nordic and European startup events focus on fostering in the next generation of founders.

Why am I in Iceland

Iceland Innovation Week (IIW) is no different and provides many additional incentives and opportunities for founders, investors, and those passionate about innovation or entrepreneurship. I will tell you about those. But for me, the personal ones like getting to visit my goddaughter, her amazing parents, and my other great friends based in Reykjavik make IIW truly special.

However, these personal motivations didn’t come first. Not at all. They were all born from my professional interests—so it should be no surprise that 95% of those I’m visiting for personal reasons are directly or indirectly involved in Iceland Innovation Week.

Iceland Innovation Week is where personal and professional interests are in perfect sync. Especially for me! But also for others and possibly you too. As you visit for the first time for professional reasons, you’ll likely extend your stay for personal reasons, and then return again and again for both.

It’s the best of both worlds!

Inspiration is waiting in the North Atlantic

Iceland Innovation Week is an annual festival held in Reykjavík at the end of May (May 13th–17th in 2024!). It celebrates and showcases innovation, has an incredible one-day climate conference called Ok, bye, and hosts the Nordic Startup Awards finals. The event encompasses a wide range of activities, from discussions and office tours to happy hours and icy ocean dips (volcanoes, too, when active — but just looks, no dips).

Along with hundreds of others, you’ll join a diverse community of visionaries, entrepreneurs, and change-makers — all exploring new technologies, and unconventional ideas while strengthening connections in the pursuit of guiding the globe toward a more sustainable future.

It is female-founded and operated and is truly different from any other tech event in the world through its unique approach. In particular, their one-day climate conference Ok, bye is edutainment at its apex.

The most edutaining three-hour tech conference

This is not a normal conference. What is special about Ok, bye is that it skews more as performance art that educates and entertains its audience as opposed to the classic formula of “Let’s gather some executives and sponsors on stage for 40 minutes at a time to sell [x, y, and z].”

Its name, Ok, bye refers to the first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change, Ok-jökull. The former glacier once covered 16sq km but has melted to a fraction of that and is no longer considered a glacier. So naturally, the focus is heavily on the climate, with each year having a distinctive theme.

This year’s theme was The Ocean and featured speakers and performers like David Helgason (Founder & CEO of Unity), Lisen Schultz (Dep. Director at Stockholm Resilience Centre), Smári McCarthy (Founder of Ecosophy), Reykjavik Queer Choir, Daníel Ágúst Haraldsson (solo artist and lead singer of GusGus), and more.

Interweaving top-tier thought leaders and change-makers in climate/sustainability with contextually relevant entertainment, Ok, bye breaks up its program so tastefully. Every 20–30 minutes when your brain gets a bit exhausted from absorbing high-level knowledge, you get a little mental refresh via a choir singing at the bottom of the ocean (thematically speaking), a world-class performer, or a creative set change.

It is literally as if a TED talk were harmonized with a Broadway performance. It is THAT level of quality and originality!

Experience it yourself May 13–17, 2024

You can watch the full 2023 show at the end of the article to get a glimpse into what 2024 has in store for its attendees.

My personal opinion corner

If you are looking for a platform to reach your target audience I recommend investing in people who create new spaces for sharing your message in an authentic way. In my experience, people are more motivated to attend, listen, write about, buy, and share your message (and ultimately, lift your profile) when it’s conveyed during an atypical and memorable experience.

Personal takeaway: Shifting from the abstract to data-centric

The following is anecdotal, gleaned from personal experiences attending many events & hearing numerous presentations & pitches on sustainability solutions.

Regarding sustainability-focused founders, investors, and corporates, my observed common thread is you often hear very abstract KPIs and long-tail milestones from people passionate about climate conservation.

“What we are doing is not enough!”

“We’ve doubled our impact since last year!”

“Our goal is to be carbon negative by 2040!”

I’ve always interpreted this way of sharing performance or goal-related information as either too vague or focusing too far into the future to be able to follow up. They’re nice exclamations and concepts in general, but it’s very difficult to maintain interest and accountability without tangible, transparent, and quantifiable KPIs.

Often, these talks are kept too general and abstract (possibly to appeal to a wider audience and to be entertaining) which then turns into a whole lot of talk about nothing, really. But who says you can't appeal to a wide audience and entertain while also providing real information, data, and actionable accountability?

Interestingly! This was not the case for large portions of the content during Iceland Innovation Week and Ok, bye. Perhaps this is an overall industry shift or maybe I am just not very well informed? Feel free to level up my knowledge in the comments—I’d appreciate it.

It was simply very motivational to hear how companies are leveraging data to drive real internal and external performance reporting in practice. It was equally refreshing to hear how investors like Katapult VC are doing this and helping their portfolio companies to focus on more data-driven, transparent, and quantifiable KPIs.

Some other data-centric, climate-oriented startups of note that participated in Iceland Innovation Week:

A collaboration-first and last approach

Personally, I don’t like status hierarchy and I don’t like ego. Those two things in particular get in the way of productivity, engagement, inclusivity, and fun. I am biased toward action and collaboration. If you also agree, spend a few days or a week in Reykjavik, and you’ll quickly value how Iceland Innovation Week organically and intentionally opens up bi-directional access to all levels of interesting and influential people.

Everyone is approachable and everyone benefits.

Within the week, formality is stripped away while you authentically build relationships with others. This is evident in the side events, parties, and speaker programs. All of this serves as the core reason I can’t help but have a sense of pride when I’m asked to be involved and do some public speaking in nothing but my own style.

This mutual trust and autonomy for speakers, hosts, investors, founders, participants, volunteers, and side event organizers are paramount to the vision of the week. The reason it works so well is because a multi-directional and multi-faceted community has been built, in which everyone buys into participating or contributing to something unique and different while being open to new experiences and people. It is also this approach that affords them the latitude to create really impactful opportunities for their sponsors and key stakeholders.

Everything is genuine, approachable, inviting, and most importantly, of the highest quality. I place a large emphasis for this on their collaboration-first and last attitude. Massive recognition and appreciation go out to the founders Melkorka and Edda as well as their amazing team and volunteers.

This year, I participated by co-hosting one of the two stages during their opening day with my fabulous friend, Freydis Hjálmarsdóttir, and then hosted solo the Silicon Vikings Pitch Competition to close out the IIW events for 2023. Both of which we had great fun with and will certainly continue to collaborate on in the future.

Hosting highlights:

During co-hosting, Freydis and I got to speak with the President of Iceland, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson (who was attending a talk on our stage). Talk about accessibility and being approachable! It’s a bit mind-blowing to think that last year, we shared a thermal pool together and this year, I was telling him about said thermal pool session. I look forward to 2024 when I can tell him about recalling telling him about recalling our thermal pool session.

As the host of the Silicon Vikings Iceland Pitch Competition, I was given the latitude to collaborate with the backstage technical team to try and do something fun for the audience and the entrepreneurs pitching. This inadvertently also meant handling a very energetic dog when its owner needed to pitch.

Congratulations to Esports Coaching Academy on winning the competition and good luck in Helsinki during SLUSH.

See some of these highlights below…

Overall Takeaway

Iceland Innovation Week is for building borderless bonds

Above all, visiting Iceland during IIW offers everyone the chance to take new, existing, and prospective business partners, professional acquaintances, familiar faces, and total strangers and transform them into friends.

Especially for those who spend the time to take a day, rent a car, and go on a small adventure involving thermal pools. These are the experiences I find drive my long-term ROI.

Special thanks to Erik de Stefanis (Partner at Inverlace Ventures) and Miho Tanaka (Startup Visa Lead at Startup City Sapporo) for the “Multipool” adventure during Iceland Innovation Week 2023.