Overview
The Nordic EdTech Forum – N8 – brings together founders of education innovation companies and evangelists from 8 Northern European countries: Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania.
Reason
- Bringing together and building a network of founders of innovation and EdTech companies
- Having public and political representation of education innovation company founders
- Opening discussions about innovation in education between EdTech founders and other market stakeholders
- Sharing experience and learning from each other
- Informing market stakeholders on how to cooperate with EdTech companies
- Improvíng access to funding for education innovation companies in the Nordic region
A brief history
1.
For example, the education market is very hard, if we can call it a market at all. Often Schools / Universities / countries do not know how to cooperate with startups, nor are they used to buying services from startups.
As one solution the Forum fosters the culture of taking risk in public sector organisations. Taking risk should be celebrated, if somebody fails it must not be considered a failure but just finding out a way how it was not possible to solve issue. After all – if there is no failure in an organisation, this means that people are afraid to try out new ways of doing things, which in other words means that there is no innovation in the organisation.
2.
- learning experience / education could be significantly improved for everybody
- kids could obtain material at least significantly faster, having no stress doing it (and we already have great examples available across the world, so it is our mission to disseminate the good practices globally)
- education could be significantly more affordable, so kids who do not have access to education today would have it soon
- education could be more accessible to disadvantaged people
- education could be a lot more considering the personal needs of people that wish to learn
- education could meet the requirements of modern (information society)
- etc
And if there will be better education, there will be a better society for everyone!
3.
The members of N8 have decided to pick up the challenge and take the responsibility to do their best to move things forward in education sector, not caring that it is a very hard thing to do.
Members
- Giving attitude – wherever possible we will do our best to support others
- Inspiration – always give our best to inspire people to achieve better
- Always help if turned to for help (at least try to help further)
- Never be afraid to ask for help/advice
- Do our utmost, not to talk negatively about anybody, especially in public. If something seems to be wrong with somebody, we politely turn to the person one-on-one to discuss our concerns.
- Never compete with other N8 members in an unfriendly manner. If there is competition, let it be fair
- Remember to keep your values before economic gain! If possible, always cooperate
- The members of N8 recognise that by coordinating their efforts and inspiring each other the education innovators can achieve vastly more than alone
The Board 2023
Jonathan Viner – Founder at 10Digits, Publisher of Nordic Edtech News
Karen V. Ordones – CEO & Founder at Tutor.id
Marija Musja – CEO & Founder at Empowerment Lab
Mathieu Skulason – CEO & Co-founder at Evolytes
Contact N8
To apply for membership, please fill out this application: N8 Membership Application
(Membership to the N8 Forum is granted by recommendation from existing members only)