30th of september Epicenter hosted Scale-up Summit Oslo as part of this year’s Oslo Innovation week. We invited some inspiring and insightful speakers to share their knowledge on how companies can succeed with today’s major scale-up challenges.

Tale Skjølsvik works as vice dean for research at the Faculty of Technology, Art and Design. She has a doctorate in strategy from BI and works as a professor of technology management at OsloMet. Tale has experience as a consultant from Bain & Company in Stockholm and Gemini Consulting (now Cap Gemini). She also has extensive lecturer experience and gives lectures and courses in digitization and management, strategy and entrepreneurship. Tales’ research interests include strategy in knowledge-intensive service companies, digitalisation in working life and the procurement of consulting services.

Talent development: how do we go about filling the talent gap ourselves. Long term we need more tech students. But that is not done in a day. Is there a short term solution? 

“ When we look at Norway’s future, we are missing a lot of people. Somebody said 20 000, somebody is saying it’s 40 000 people. We are also missing the specialized people, those who are really good at being specialized in technology, “ – says Skjølsvik.  

Skjølsvik spoke about three different layers we need to think about when it comes to the scarcity of technology resources and competence: awareness, access and action.

“We have a huge potential in engaging everybody in technology. And then there are some things we need to get away from: the presumption that ICT is boring, unsocial and male. We need to show the cool stuff in technology to all kids, but especially to girls”.

The University OsloMet is engaged in a program called “Girls and technology” to raise awareness and work against the lack of diversity in the tech sector. Skjølsvik specifies that we need to engage and motivate all kinds of diversity in technology to fill the gap and to make responsible technology in the future.  

“ We need to think about this really carefully and make technology great for all”.  

According to Kjølsvik there are more qualified applicants than study places for those who wish to study technology. And we need more of them to make technology more accessible. 

“ Then finally we need to take action, we need to spread this knowledge and talk about it. We need to advise people. We need to work together to make it happen.” 

Want to check out the rest of the summit? Follow the links below:

Svein Sørensen, Talented: Talent attraction
Thomas Wrede-Holm, Investinor: Smart investments
Klara Vatn, Spacemaker.ai: Scale-up growing pains
Sondre Jahr Nygaard, Abelia: Political changes