Sailing trips, mediocrity, internet emotions and archipelago philosophy: Four recommendations from the new INVIs

Sometimes the most powerful insights are found when you look away from Excel spreadsheets and political memos - and instead get carried away by a boat trip, a book of liver pate or a summer story from the Finnish archipelago.

What do Lynetteholmen, Morten Münster's mediocrity, Tove Jansson's Summer Book and the documentary Can't feel nothing really have in common? On the surface: absolutely nothing. But taken together, they might inspire you in ways you hadn't thought of. The wicked and the everyday, the systemic and the personal meet here.

INVI intern Nåkve Hartmann Traberg Smidt recommends a boat trip to Copenhagen's new Mantattan

My recommendation for the INVI universe is to take a boat trip in Kongeløbet and watch Lynetteholmen take shape. Digging cows stand in the middle of the water and dig up sludge - and it's almost poetic how the city of the future emerges here. Whether you agree with the project or not, it takes wicked imagination to think 75 years ahead and envision how this artificial island will function. A physical manifestation of utopia and a perfect opportunity to talk about long-term planning, sustainability and urban development.

On a creative level, I hope that Lynetteholmen can become Copenhagen's answer to Manhattan's Living Breakwaters - a project that combines nature, technology and social visions. It reminds us that wicked problems require wicked ideas, and that sometimes we need to dare to think outside the box to create real change.

Camilla Kirstine Elisabeth Bay Brix Nielsen, Development Consultant at INVI, recommends Morten Münster's new book The Department of Magical Thinking - and the incredible potential of mediocrity.

Morten is a gifted communicator, and his latest book The Department of Magical Thinking is no exception. In the book with a huge packet of Stryhn's roughly chopped liver pate on the cover, Morten makes a case for the incredible potential of mediocrity. And paradoxically, liver pate is anything but mediocre. The book is packed with examples and research that support Morten's claim that 'good enough is best' in the pursuit of greater mental well-being, healthier habits, increased productivity, better sleep and a longer and happier life.

If you like the tactile experience, I would definitely recommend the physical book. If you prefer inspiration directly in your earpiece, I can also highly recommend the audiobook, which is recorded by perhaps the most pleasant voice in the audiobook universe, Morten Rønnelund. If the liver pate is too big a mouthful, you can grab an episode of Brinkmanns briks: "Be mediocre and be happy".

Noa Jenkins, student and graphic designer, recommends The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

My recommendation is a small fiction short story called The Summer Book written by Tove Jansson. A small 176-page story about 6-year-old Sophia, her father and her grandmother spending their summer on an island in the Finnish archipelago, a few months after the death of Sophia's mother.

In my eyes, it's an obvious choice for a book to read on the go if you need a break, but also to be forced to reflect on what you actually want out of "life" and how you act accordingly. We are all part of a lot of small micro-universes, how do they affect each other? And how does it affect the society-macro universe we are all part of in different ways?

Here's one of my favorite quotes from the book that makes me think about these types of questions, just in case you need some reflection material for your afternoon coffee.

It's from the beginning of the book, when Sophia has a friend of the same age (Berenice) visiting who can't find her place on the island. Berenice and her grandmother are talking while planting potatoes.

"If she had been a bit bigger," the grandmother thought. Preferably a lot bigger, then I could have told her that I understand how bad it is. Here you are plunged headlong into a small dense group of people who have always lived together and with the habit of ownership have moved around each other in a place they know inside out, and even the slightest threat to their habits only makes them even more dense and confident.

An island can be awful for those who come from the outside. Everything is finished, everyone has their place, wayward, calm and self-sufficient. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are rock-solid with repetition, and at the same time they roam through their days as capriciously and randomly as if the world ended at the horizon line.

The grandmother pondered all this so intensely that she forgot both the potatoes and Berenice."

Andreas Holm-Hansen recommends the documentary Can't Feel Nothing (David Borenstein, 2024), Available at dr.dk/tv

With dry humor and humanity, the documentary takes the viewer on a tour de force into the corners of the internet. It examines how the human emotional compass is commercialized with a surprising, sober and original look.

I love when technology is held up as a mirror and exposes our humanity. A well-educated doctor from the Balkans, who dreamed of a true and just world, now produces fake news about chem-trails that is read by an anxious soul in California. The internet knows no borders and the connections across the globe are subtle.  

As a father, I wonder what happens to our youth when they are marinated in American and Chinese algorithms 4-5 hours a day. Spiritual rearmament is the political buzzword of the year, and I believe that young people's use of American and Chinese tech platforms must be the first item on the agenda. Polemically: what happens when we feed generations with garbage, when the Chinese youth grow up with different algorithms that show knowledge, engineering and math?

This is a crazy problem. At INVI, we have our eye on youth and in particular the so-called potential group. With our wicked problem model, in collaboration with the Ministry of Employment, we will deliver insights and analysis directly from the youth and into the civil service. It's part of our strategy to bridge the gap between policy and practitioners - so that policy design and roll-out can be improved.

Want to know more about what shaped Nåkve, Camilla Noa and Andreas?
Unfold them below:

• Nåkve Hartmann Traberg Smidt, intern

  I was born and raised in Copenhagen and have lived in virtually all of the city's postal codes - from the bridge districts to the waterfront - so you can safely call me a true Copenhagener. My interest in society and politics was sparked early on, not least because I come from a family where everyone is a lawyer and where justice is not just a value.

  What has shaped your route to INVI?

  I study Politics and Public Administration at university, and here I've especially geeked out on governance paradigms, co-creation and civil service virtues. I'm fascinated by how civil servants navigate the cross-pressure between neutrality and political loyalty.

  An important part of my personal development has been my time in the Royal Life Guard. The most important thing I took with me was the ability to put things into perspective. When I'm faced with a difficult task or a deadline, I think: "This is no worse than standing guard in the rain at 3am with a pack on.

• Camilla Kirstine Elisabeth Bay Brix Nielsen, Development Consultant

  Camilla holds a PhD in Behavioral Design from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), where she has worked with practitioners and researchers to develop and test innovative problem-solving methods based on understanding human needs, motivations and contextual behavior. She has written a behavioral design workbook for the City of Copenhagen's Technical and Environmental Administration, and holds a bachelor and master's degree in Design & Innovation from DTU. And she is still considering studying psychology.

  Here at INVI, Camilla develops tools that help practitioners explore and map the causes and solutions of wicked problems, facilitates workshops and contributes with her expertise to the development of internal and external professional communication.

  What has shaped your route to INVI?

  I have always been interested in human relationships. Why do people do what they do - individually and collectively? 

  As a child of divorce, I grew up in two separate homes. I have been part of many different types of families early in life, and I have related to many different people. This is probably the reason why I immediately thought I should study psychology.

  At the same time, my curious fingers have taken apart countless machines over the years. How are the components actually made and assembled into a working cell phone? And can I save it myself after a trip to Bagsværd Lake?

  Therefore, it's no wonder that I ended up taking a holistic problem-solving degree that combines technical and user-friendly design and innovation. Here I specialized in human behavior as a product of interaction between people and their environment, including physical and digital products, infrastructures and other people.

  We can create technical - and socially idealistic - super solutions, but they only work in the real world if they meet people's needs, motivations and contextual behavior.

• Noa Jenkins, student and graphic designer

  I've always been fascinated by why people do what they do and how many things that may seem obvious on the surface actually work.

  This wonder and curiosity has often found its way to me through art and nature. I'm one of those kids who never stopped drawing, and I still come home from walks in the woods and on the beach with pockets full of finds I couldn't leave behind. 

  I ended up going the visual route and took a bachelor's degree in visual communication from the Royal Academy. After three years of "fluffy" artist/design practice, I needed to get out into the world and feel how I could use it for something concrete, what problems I could help solve and visualize with my design skills.

  Through years of work experience at cultural institutions, NGOs and agencies, I have discovered that the combination of the creative and strategic is where I feel most at home as a designer, which is one of the reasons why I have returned to school at the IT University, where I am studying a master's degree in Digital Design and Interactive Technologies and as a graphic designer at INVI. It's not about being right, it's about looking at the realities, what works and what can be improved, what the soft and hard values are.

  The idealistic and practical approach to wicked problems brings them, in my eyes, back down to earth and into the human community.

• Andreas Holm-Hansen, intern

  With a multifaceted background, I chose to study civil engineering in my 30s. I now have a bachelor's degree in Design & Innovation and am well on my way through my master's degree in Human Centered Artificial Intelligence. It will be used to create AI that creates value in practice and is sound in theory.

  I grew up in association Denmark in a handball hall and spent the first part of my life there. First in Copenhagen and then Viborg, with a lot of other young people. I have therefore seen and talked to most of Denmark. It has shaped me and I'll never forget the view of the handball hall when it all gets a bit too fancy. Because believe it or not - it happens - also in Copenhagen!  

  Handball was shelved after high school and I went traveling. After a trip to Central America, I tried to hitchhike home across the Atlantic. I ended up in Dakar, on a fishing trawler that had been discarded and retired in Nova Scotia, but would now have a new life in Senegal. We were greeted by a 30-man crew who were now fishing from the ship and the ship owner, an old herring fisherman from Holland. I spent the night with him at the former Luxembourg embassy in the city and was sent home on a plane with 3000 dollars in my pocket. Since then, I have been forever fascinated by global connections and the way we are, and always have been, connected across the globe.