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

The main aim of the Nordic EdTech Forum is to offer a platform for sharing experiences, information and support to its members by:

  • 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

The reasons why Ernest Jenavs (Edurio) and Märt Aro (DreamApply.com) decided to initiate the N8 movement in the summer of 2016 were:

1.

Sharing experience between one-another is valuable as EdTech founders have to tackle very similar issues.

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.

Education innovators are driven by very similar mission. They believe that:

  • 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.

Education innovation enterpreneurs are truly inspirational people as they are crazy enough to believe that they can make the world a better place.

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.

Economic Impact

Expenditure on education globally is ~5 trillion EUR / year, which makes it one of the biggest cost articles for governments / taxpayers. On one hand it means that it is a very important area to improve as each innovation may have a significant impact on everyones lives. It also means that the next biggest company in the world could be an education company. And we would like to see that those companies would represent Nordic values of cooperation, human rights, transparency etc.

Members

Members of the N8 Forum are made up of founders and leaders of the following companies. Principles that N8 members must cherish and follow:

 

  • 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

Iceland

Chapter President
Þorbjörg Helga Vigfúsdóttir

Denmark

Chapter President
Aviaja Borup

Norway

Chapter President
Erlend Øverby

Sweden

Chapter President
Laura Linnaeus

Finland

Chapter President
Peter Vesterbacka

Estonia

Chapter President
Kopal Maheshwari

Latvia

Chapter President
Edgars Skutans

Lithuania

Chapter President
Danielius Stasiulis

Evangelists

N8 members that are working closely with innovation in education and have a significant impact to the field.

 

  • Akseli Huhtanen – Head of Program – Dare to Learn festival for rethinking learning
  • Patrick Alexander Winther Christensen – Senior Consultant – EdTech Denmark – Connecting EdTech companies, schools, instructors, and researchers to facilitate innovation in education sector
  • Urmas E Heinaste – EdTech enthusiast
  • Maarika Truu – Head – Startup Estonia, Maarika is also a former board member of Garage48
  • Margus Pedaste – professor of educational technology, Tartu University / Stanford University
  • Natalie Mets – Project Manager – Garage48 Foundation – organising EdTech hackathons
  • Hege Tollerud – CEO – Oslo EdTech Cluster – network established to support development, commercialisation and export of Norwegian educational technologies
  • Antti Korhonen – Co-founder – XEdu – xEdu runs two acceleration programs for edtech startups per year
  • Peter Fagerström – Founder & Entrepreneurship Evangelist – Educraftor – Åbo Akademi University – HUB Turku – educational innovation and development agency, StartUp activities in academia, co-working, makerspace and innovation centre.
  • Ailar Väärtmaa – Enterpreneurship teacher, marketing expert, Creating a future university.
  • Anna Dementyeva – Program Manager, xEdu
  • Carlos Canteri – Founder, YSTO Academy
  • Jannie Jeppesen – CEO, Swedish Edtech Industry
  • Kathleen Naglee – Head of School, International School of Helsinki
  • Marie Björk – Project Manager, NetPort Science Park
  • Niclas Melin – Digital Cultivator, NetPort Science Park
  • Eilif Trondsen – Silicon Vikings
  • Rūta Avulytė Jelagė – UN Sustainable, Development Goals (SDGs) implementation
  • Line Holst Jensen – Founder, AZENA
  • Mirell Merirand – Founder, Education Accelerator Foundation

Advisors

  • Stuart Patton – Advisor on issues related to Asia, based in Hong Kong
  • Aleksander Gansen – has been starting and running companies for over twenty years, experienced in international sales, mentoring early stage startups
  • Hanna-Leana Taoubi – expert in language learning, AI based language learning
  • Amit Gupta – building bridges between India and Nordics
  • P Thomas Abraham – an EdTech fan from India

Contact N8

Services should be engaged by following the links to the individual companies listed on this page. 

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)

Contact the board via e-mail.