I remember in 2009, when I decided that I wanted to learn more about entrepreneurs in Iceland and I wanted to meet with Entrepreneurs, I went to a place called the “House of Ideas“, which was a coworking space that was set up by the Art School of University of Iceland with support from the City of Reykjavik. The place was an abandoned old seafood factory. It was an open space that had tables, chairs, sofas, a meeting room and a cafe. A number of startups were starting their journey there. That is where I met with Team CLARA. I think Icel
and is fortunate to have a number of these coworking spaces open up and help entrepreneurs to have a space to start working from. I wrote about the effort of Jon Von Techtzner, again a great resource and infrastructure to help entrepreneurs. There is a renewed focus to really improve the infrastructure for Entrepreneurs and Startups in Iceland at all levels, which is extremely positive development for the Startup ecosystem.
New Coworking space in Hlemmur
I am sitting in one coworking space right now, it is a brand new location in the Centre of Reykjavik City. It used to be an abandoned garage. This space is funded and hosted by Innovation Center Iceland.
Innovation Center Iceland is a R&D and business support institute in Iceland under the Ministry of Industry and Innovation. Their mission is to increase innovation, productivity and competitiveness of Icelandic business by doing innovative technology research, diffusing knowledge and giving support to entrepreneurs and start-up companies. In addition to providing coworking space, classes and other things. The Innovation Center in Iceland also runs the Fab Labs. It is a great place for making things. It aligns with what I had written about earlier.
Click on the image to go to the video
Innovation Center Iceland operates three digital small-scale workshops offering (personal) digital fabrication. These Fab Labs are equipped with an array of flexible computer controlled tools that cover several different length scales and various materials, with the aim to make “almost anything”. Fab Lab is a part of a global network managed by MIT‘s Center for Bits and Atoms. Sherry Lassiter @ MIT is the manager of the global network. She visited Iceland recently to meet the managers of Fab Lab in Iceland.
I am starting to deliver lectures every thursday from 16:00 to 17:00 at this location and I am also going to start having office hours, any entrepreneurs who wants to meet me can just show up. I will have office hours from 15:00 to 16:00, again every thursday.
