+Katapult Podcast

Meet Stine Jersie Olsen, Chief Consultant – Growth & Impact at Danske Bank. She's an expert on impact investing and emerging markets, and shares her insights into new opportunities and how to invest outside your comfort zone. She’s blown away by the entrepreneurial spirit she finds in Sub-Saharan Africa, and also by how emerging societies leapfrog (skip over) old technologies and go straight into the new, like solar energy and mobile payment.

In our last episode of series one, Aurore talks to Swedish entrepreneur Ingmar Rentzhog. His organization We Don’t Have Time aims to create the world’s biggest social media network to put pressure on world leaders to do the right thing. Not long ago, our leaders didn’t want to talk about a problem they didn’t have a solution for. People buried their heads in the sand. Meanwhile, most industries did everything they could to delay change. Now we all know better. The question is: Can we mobilize enough people worldwide for prevent further damage and build resilience against climate change? Thank you for listening!

Azeem Azhar is an acclaimed journalist, thinker, entrepreneur, investor and founder of The Exponential View. He shares his insight into what needs to happen for new technologies to actually have an impact –for everyone. The modern world was built on the back of a political belief of the rational man, but history has taught us that we’re anything but. Can we even agree on what needs to change in our world today?

What’s the easiest way to take down a country? And how’s artificial intelligence entering modern warfare? Professor Fredrik Blix is an expert on cybersecurity and he says we must pay attention. He also warns that ‘no sane person on earth have Facebook’. Facial recognition, for example, can be used for good and bad. Chinese police walk around with AI glasses using facial recognition to spot wanted people. The same tool is used to find and bring home missing children. Meanwhile, we let big American companies build databases for facial recognition by giving our faces away online. The question is – what happens when hackers get access to your face and the rest of your data?

There’s no question about it: Shifting our diets will have a huge positive impact. Alessandro Demaio is a medical doctor who grew up in Australia in a big Italian, food-loving family. He’s an expert on poverty, diseases, and nutrition, and he works closely with Gunhild Stordalen as EAT’s chief executive officer. His message is clear: «Meat produced in a way that is disrespectful to animals and bad for the planet has no place in the future of food». He talks about how the Planetary Health Diet can help feed everyone and save the planet. Almost one billion people wake up hungry every day and our ecosystem is in serious trouble. Do you take the challenge?

Please, can I order some DNA? It may sound like science fiction, but Dr. Tiffany Vora is looking at a future where anyone can go online, pick the DNA sequence they want and have it delivered. She talks about how we can use the various DNA to create cells that eat plastic or petroleum or convert sunlight into energy. We already have bacteria that are programmed to eat oil, it’s really a matter of creating something even more efficient. As a research scientist, Faculty director and Vice Chair of Medicine and Digital Biology at Singularity University, Tiffany Vora deals with the future of life science and technology. She gives us a glimpse into her fascinating world.

Meet Kyle Nel, author, CEO and cofounder of Uncommon Partners, talking about the power of storytelling. He claims that the West has simply lost its story in our constant fight to keep others away from our wealth. How do we create the stories about who we are, what we want to change and how we’ll get there? One of many things Kyle Nel and his team works on right now, is creating a set of stories or universal narratives about us. He wants to bring people together that’d normally never talk to each other, to discuss possible outcomes of these stories. Of course, to reach out we need great storytellers – and we need hip hop.

Happy New Year! We’re kicking off 2019 talking to the impressive Pakistani entrepreneur and investor Shiza Shahid. She’s the cofounder of The Malala Fund and has just launched her new investment platform Now Ventures. As we all know, Malala Yousafzai was almost assassinated by the Taliban for wanting to go to school, she was rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, and with the help of Shiza, she’s been able to spread the word globally about the importance of education. Shiza Shahid also talks about why it’s important for companies to have a purpose beyond profit. What better way to start the year?

"How on earth can we use the state of consciousness called flow, with creativity and collaboration to solve the world’s crisis? Steven Kotler, award-winning journalist, author and cofounder of Research Flow Genome Project, has some pretty good answers to this question. He claims it’s the best and possibly only way to move forward if we want to survive as a species. But, there’s a problem: We suck at teaching people to become more creative, and we need to improve. Worried about climate change? Listen to what Kotler’s got to say about the largely forgotten biodiversity-crisis. The eco system services – everything the planet does for us – are about to shut down. If or when they do, we’re done. Luckily there’s hope – tune in and learn more.

93% of capital invested in tech 2018 went to all male founding teams says Atomico's report Diversity and Inclusion in Tech. Meet two trailblazing and impressive investors who are really moving the needle for diversity in technology - Arlan Hamilton founder and CEO of Backstage Capital and Sophia Bendz partner at Atomico.

“What most people don’t realize, is how hackable and persuadable they are” says Aza Raskin, a physicist, designer, musician, serial entrepreneur and the co-founder of Center For Humane Technology. He talks about how technology’s changing our behavior and our values. How Facebook and Google are crawling deep into our brains to grab our attention and occupy our minds. He’s the son of Jef Raskin, the inventor of the Macintosh at Apple, and held his first speech on user interfaces at the age of 10. Now he’s deeply concerned about how technology’s tearing apart our common reality.

How can we stop being dependent on fossil fuels? Peter Carlsson, the co-founder and CEO of Northvolt and previously Elon Musks right-hand man at Tesla, is a good person to ask. He helped launch the Tesla Model S, and right now, his Swedish company’s on a mission to build the greenest battery in the world. Peter Carlsson talks about the importance of our ability to store energy and his ambitious plans for both his business and the planet.

Aurore Belfrage was born in London, grew up in Saudi Arabia and moved to Sweden at the age of nine. She’s very familiar with the world of technology and venture capitalism, as an entrepreneur and investor – and she doesn’t mince her words about the current state of affairs. She promises to go deep into environmental issues, how the brain works, schools and education, new leaderships and how we can use technology to really move the needle. In conversation with Daniel Butenschøn. Tune in!