Thomas Bjelkeman: What if we really took a systems approach to everything we do?

In this episode of Impact Stories, host Ronny Eriksson sits down with Thomas Bjelkeman, a visionary technologist and entrepreneur dedicated to leveraging software and data to tackle global challenges.

Thomas shares his journey from feeling disillusioned with the traditional software industry to co-founding the Akvo Foundation, where he developed open-source tools that mapped drinking water sources for over 100 million people across Africa and Asia. His work significantly improved water management in developing regions, showcasing the transformative power of data for social good.

He then introduces his latest venture, Johannas Stadsodlingar, an innovative company pioneering circular, sustainable food production systems in urban settings. By integrating fish farming and plant cultivation in closed-water loops and harnessing advanced data analytics, Johannas Stadsodlingar aims to revolutionize food production with minimal environmental impact.

Join us as we explore how Thomas combines technology, data, and systems thinking to create scalable solutions for global issues. Discover how a holistic approach can drive massive impact and why thinking big can lead to real change.

Transcript

Ronny Eriksson:

Thomas Bjelkeman, your expertise spans across multiple domains, including software development, data science, and international development. With a deep commitment to leveraging technology for good, you've spent over two decades working on projects that bridge the gap between technology and social impact. You co-founded Akvo Foundation, an organization dedicated to creating open-source software and data solutions for international development and water management. Today, you are the Managing Director and co-founder of Johannes, a circular, sustainable food production system that scales and is replicable. Your innovative approaches have significantly advanced the fields of water sanitation, data collection, and resource management, benefiting communities around the world.

Welcome to today's podcast.

Thomas:

Thank you.

Ronny:

That's a pretty impressive background you have there—a lot of topics that are really close to my heart, but also to the people here at Catapult Future Fest. I also know that you're part of the Solution Stage program, so I'm excited to see you in more detail there, pitching and presenting what your solution is all about.

Each of these podcast episodes starts with the main theme and main question of "What if."

I'm now going to throw you into the deep end with that question and get the conversation going from there, so hopefully you're ready.

Thomas:

That's where we like it—the deep end. Otherwise, we wouldn't be starting new companies all the time.

Ronny:

Alright.

What if software and data could better come together for mass global impact?

Thomas:

That's, to me, really quite interesting because, partially to me anyway, that's what's happening with the internet at the same time as it's being hijacked primarily for advertising purposes. But there is quite a lot of underlying good stuff if you look for it, which is also why we—how long ago was that now? Just nearly 17 years ago or something—we started Akvo Foundation because we saw there was lots of opportunity to do better across the world, particularly for the people who had it the worst.

Ronny:

So what is Akvo Foundation all about?

Thomas:

We started Akvo Foundation to work with water issues primarily. We started Akvopedia, a wiki. It was an easy way to put lots of things about water, sanitation, how to create better water solutions, etc., online because the material was available. But eventually, we landed in data collection for field workers because we saw that a lot of the money spent on trying to solve water and international development—so drinking water primarily, but also sanitation—was poorly spent because they didn't have good data.

To make a long story short—I spent 12 years on this stuff—we ended up maybe mapping 100 to 120 million people's drinking water sources across nearly all of West Africa, significant portions of East Africa, and Southeast Asia. That data didn't exist before we made these collaborations with local NGOs as well as UNICEF, UNDP, and the World Bank. That was then used to do infrastructure investments to improve the situation for the people with the worst water access. So that can be extremely powerful.

Ronny:

It's a really interesting topic—the whole gathering data and understanding how the world works with data. I'm a huge fan of megaprojects myself. I've been following a couple of researchers in the megaproject segment. Where megaprojects actually started to be pretty impactful is when they had analyzed more than 2,000 of these megaprojects, really digging deep into why they tend to go over time and over budget. The only way to find that answer is actually to analyze enough of a sample to be able to say what normally goes right and what normally goes wrong. That seems like what you've been doing in a bit different context as well—actually finding those data points.

Is Johannes then a spin-off of that data that you've been able to gather? Is that kind of like...?

Thomas:

No, Johannes is something different. It has a lot of data in it. At Johannes, we create circular, closed food production systems in a water loop. So fish in water—we feed the fish. What comes out of the fish goes to bacteria cultures. They convert what comes out into nutrients for plants. We grow plants, and together they clean the water; it goes back to the fish. We take waste from the plant production and other people's plant production, feed it to insects, and it becomes a significant portion of the fish feed.

These are closed indoor systems. They're entirely indoors. Because I come from a data background, the whole system is, of course, monitored through sensors and data. So you have lots and lots of data sensors across the system that tell us how the system functions, what the situation is, and whatever. We get updates from every sensor every minute. We have graphs across the years that show exactly what the situation in the system was at any point in time, partly because we need to learn, partially because it's useful for alarms and when things go wrong—because we're newer to this, we build new things, and sometimes things go pear-shaped—and then you get literally woken up at midnight and have to rush out to the facility and fix something.

But it's also about learning and even putting things like machine learning to use to optimize these kinds of systems in the future. It's water again because everything is water-based, but it's very different. Instead of trying to supply people with water and monitoring and thinking about water and pollution, we're growing food in water.

Ronny:

Water is one of the most important things in the world. We are made mostly out of water, and water is everywhere, and water is needed for almost everything.

Thomas:

At some point—how many years ago now? It's nearly 20 years ago—I was working in the software industry. I was so fed up with the whole thing, so I left the software industry and decided, "What do I need to do?" If you look at the world, most pollution travels through water or the air in the world—the stuff that affects everybody. And I decided to go the water route. So I actually went back to university, studied environmental science with a water focus so I could start doing this because I didn't have enough scientific knowledge, I felt. So I was very lucky—my wife... At first, I went to an environmental management course in the evenings, and then I told my wife, "I know I said half a year. Can I get three years, please, so I can do a master's degree?" And she said yes.

So that meant putting together my business knowledge—because I've been running startups for the last 30 years—the data and computer science working with computers, and adding the environmental science part. That brought together Akvo Foundation together with a bunch of other people that I started this with. It wasn't me alone; we were like six or seven people. And then later now, the same thing with Johannes—we started it with seven other people.

But it brings together data, it brings together science, it brings together business to understand how you do this much better.

Ronny:

And that's where the most impressive changes normally happen—is when you cross-pollinate different kinds of know-how. So I really like this—like water and data—you might not normally be putting those two together, but then when you do it in a novel and new way, you start to actually get something that no one else is able to do and be able to measure it to do it even better. So these closed circular systems—that's something I've always been super interested in because I worked up north in the Arctic region, where growing anything indoors is something we really need because outdoors there isn't enough time to grow to be self-sufficient. Norway is especially known for their fisheries, so there is a lot of fish to be grown.

So how far have you come with that whole process and whole project? Is that something that already can be scaled to all of these different places? How large is your impact already at this point?

Thomas:

It's not very large at this point. We started the company five years ago. We've been growing food in our pilot facility north of Stockholm for about three and a half years—nearly four now—and it's been extremely successful. The output from a facility like this is primarily vegetables, so it's one-tenth fish—in this case, rainbow trout—and nine-tenths or even more vegetables. And the fun thing is we thought that if we could get the same quality vegetables you can buy in the store, we'll be happy. Well, it didn't turn out that way at all. The best chefs in the country—so we have World Championship chefs, we have the Chef of the Year, we have TV chefs that are on TV all the time—they're saying, "These are the best vegetables they can get hold of." End of story. They're standing in front of the camera and saying, "You can't get better than this in Northern Europe." So we're really extremely happy.

We're just now raising funds to build the next automated facility so that we can prove all of this works in an automated way. We know it's going to work, but investors don't believe it until they see it, so we have to take that step. But it's also good—you learn things every step along the way. You don't want to build something too big too quickly. And then after that, we're ready to scale up to be able to supply enough that you start seeing an impact for a whole country. So that's really exciting.

I would like to spend more time in Norway, where we are now, because Norway, compared to Sweden, is used to investing money in food and primary food production, as the huge fish—salmon—and other fish-growing systems that they have here, and the way the market works here. What's so interesting with that is that every kilo of feed you put into fish produces nearly a kilo of fish, but then here one dumps out the extra nutrients into the sea. In our type of system, every kilo of fish feed not only produces a kilo of fish, it also produces 10, 12, 15 kilos of vegetables. So we reuse that nutrient multiple times, and we can charge as much per kilo for those vegetables as you charge for the fish, if not more.

So it's not only highly more efficient—I mean, it's like 10 times more efficient from a nutrient point of view—but it's also really economically efficient. I mean, it's not free; you have to build a facility, all of this stuff. But it's like—you start looking at it and you go, "This makes a lot of sense."

So we work with researchers around nutrient recovery systems from fish and all sorts of things like that. They're all cutting edge, and it makes a huge difference in how the environmental impact is going to be in the long run because you use the resources much, much more efficiently.

Ronny:

What makes you unique then? I know there are a lot of these circular growing models and new models to do fish, but what is your unique selling point?

Thomas:

Well, we actually work with the researchers that say there are not a lot of people that actually put these things into practice. There's a lot of thinking about doing it—I know some of this stuff is happening in Norway today—but it's at the very early stage. I know for certain in Sweden nobody else is doing it. So even researchers that work across Europe and other parts of the world say this is one of the most practical approaches, and we're sort of getting our hands dirty. We're really doing this—learning how to do it.

We've never bred fish before, so there are some things that we are behind on that take time to get up to speed. What we're learning is that a lot of preconceived ideas about how this doesn't actually work are wrong, which the quality, for example, of our products—when the chefs say this is fantastic—proves.

Ronny:

And then through that, you actually are not only making an impact on nature and not wasting things, but you're actually making an impact even on a completely new industry, which is the food industry—chefs and restaurants and all of that. We wouldn't have maybe expected that—doing an impact—but if they get better raw ingredients, that's something that no one else can provide.

Thomas:

So there's plenty of interesting stuff to do around these things because we also look at—because we take things out of a facility, vegetables and fish—you have to put things in. It's not a perpetual motion machine. So you also have to look at how do you take responsibility for the things that are produced on the outside that you need on the inside. So there's agricultural products and other things that you need to put in, and how do you take responsibility for those things too, so that you do all of this in a responsible manner.

So, I mean, it's really quite exciting. At the same time, it's really challenging because, particularly where we are based in Sweden, people are not used to investing in food in this way. I mean, if you make a crude statement, people think farmers produce food; farmers make no money; therefore, you can't invest in that. And well, we can essentially show that that's not true. But it's a bit of an uphill struggle sometimes.

Ronny:

That's what changes always and impact always is like. If there's nothing to fight against, then it's probably not that impactful—that much change—because then it's like everyone is already accepting it, and it's probably the norm. So you're doing a super important job from an interesting angle.

So I kind of like the storyline that first, in the software industry, you were fed up, so you decided now to feed others. So it's like there's a lot of beauty in that.

Just—the topic is "What if," and I know each of you joining the program, speakers or scale-ups or startups presenting, you have come up also with your own "What if" statement. So what is your "What if"? How do you see that question?

Thomas:

Well, I mean, what if we really took a systems approach to what we do? I mean, because that's essentially what we work on, right? Today, everybody's like doing something very, very narrow. You see people—"I'm building something," or "I'm growing something," or "I'm selling something." But what impact does that have on other things? How do you design something coherent from the beginning that hangs together? It turns out that it's not actually that hard, and it can make a big, big difference. But the feedback you get is, "Oh no, that's too complicated. There are too many skills, and there are too many things that can go wrong." And actually, we kind of show that it's the other way around because once you design something which looks more like a natural process, it sort of takes care of itself. It doesn't have fewer things that can go wrong, in our view.

So it's a lot about thinking coherently and thinking at the strategic level, how this is hanging together from the beginning.

Ronny:

Exactly. How would you exemplify that? Do you have a concrete example, of course, of what you do—maybe something else?

Thomas:

About something else—I mean, maybe transport. It's very easy to say, "Well, transport is good for me if I have a car." But how do you put together a transport system that sort of hangs together from the very beginning, where you think through all the steps and see, can we make this coherent and work all the time?

The thing that's at the top of my mind, of course, are these nutrient loops in food—that's what I work on. We're trying to think about, instead of shipping soy from Brazil for fish feed in Norway, shipping phosphorus from Morocco for soy in Brazil—all of these international supply chains—we've actually designed a process that works within 50 kilometers. It doesn't work the same everywhere in the world within 50 kilometers, but we've designed something that would work in Oslo or in Stockholm or in Helsinki within 50 kilometers. You don't have to go and get soy from Brazil to make it work or phosphorus from Morocco.

Those are the kind of things I think are possible even at the company level. You don't have to sort of redesign society from scratch or anything.

Ronny:

Exactly. It's kind of like you need to think top-down—kind of like how it will look when it's all together—but then you build it bottom-up.

Thomas:

Then you start building it bottom-up. It's funny when you start saying these kind of broad visions. When we started Akvo, my colleagues that I started with—a great team of Dutch people that I worked with—we kind of said, "Hmm, we could map the drinking water in the rural areas—not in the cities—but across the rural areas where a lot of people live, like half the population at minimum. We can map all of Africa." That's like at least 500 million people. People laughed at us.

Twelve years later, when I left—I sort of had done my work—we had literally mapped 100 million people in Africa. We'd proven this can be done. When we'd gone to the big agencies, both the international development agencies and UNICEF, etc., and said, "Look, we can get this done now," but the whole system is so politicized and has its own kind of agendas and things that it didn't happen. We had the tools—it was all open-source software. We had the methodologies. The people in the countries said, "We want this because it works," but to actually get it rolled out across the world the way we thought we could get it done now, when we proved it works, was... Well, it got to the point where I gave up. I was like, "Okay, I can't do this anymore. Somebody else has to take over now."

It is possible to do these kinds of things, but sometimes you need more people to back you up. That's sometimes a really hard thing to get to, and it becomes politics. Well, you know what politics looks like. It's hard, right?

Ronny:

It's hard and complicated, and I think in that segment we also would need a bit more impact and a bit like that top-down planning and the bottom-up building. You don't see it that much in politics as I wish we would see.

Thomas:

My view on that in the end has become, "Let's show them it can be done," and in the end, they can't say no.

Ronny:

This is a concrete example as well. We were doing this project called Ambitious Africa some years ago. It started from one incubator that was built in Rwanda for agriculture. There was a huge struggle in making this one incubator building happen—a couple hundred square meters, hard to find money, hard to sell it, hard to make it a reality. A couple of months later, I joined my friends to help out with the project. We met with Peter Vesterbacka, the Angry Birds founder or builder back in the days. He said, "Hey, what you do is great, but do it in all—sell that you're doing it in all the 54 African countries." We changed the vision to be that. Suddenly, from having a really hard time funding one small thing, it became easy to make six and seven happen at the same time, and there was money. It's exactly the same thing that you're saying—that's where impact happens. It's like dare to dream big and dare to paint the bigger picture because that's what makes people and the governments and the funders actually move. It is actually going to have change and not only be a one-off project.

Thomas:

That's sometimes one of my problems, probably, is I don't think big enough sometimes and get people excited at the big enough level because I want to prove that it works before we scale, and that maybe is a little bit—maybe we should be more cocky about what we do. We are more the snorting people—what can I do about it?

Ronny:

It's like we don't want to shout and scream too many things out before we actually know that it's doable.

Thomas:

That's where we're getting better at it.

Ronny:

There's also then own challenges with the U.S. model where you are really cocky about other things. There is a lot of over-promising and under-delivering.

We're coming towards the end, and one of my favorite topics and questions that I popped up here is, like, what's next? What do you think in the impact journey you're creating—what is next? What is going to happen next? Of course, concretely, you mentioned already that there is working towards a new facility and funding. May all of these things work out. What will we see in five or ten years?

Thomas:

What I really would like to see is more cross-Nordic collaboration. The Nordics—we're really crap at collaborating. The Swedes think they're the best; the Norwegians and the Danes look at the Swedes and laugh; the Finns are like, "Who are you guys anyway?" Today, I think Swedes are too cocky about something they should not be cocky about. The Finns are really good at agricultural production and food safety—in other words, having food access to people from a historical point of view—wars and now that's come up again as something that we need to worry about. The Norwegians have proven themselves really well in the fish industry. We can integrate these things across. We have all the components. If we sit down together and say, "We the Nordics really are quite good at this stuff," but if we worked together, we could beat the world. We could be really, really good at it. Absolutely, we can beat the Americans, who always think that they're the best at everything. We can do that, but we need to lift our eyes a little bit and shake hands. That's why I love being here in Oslo now. We had Catapult invest in us. These are the beginnings of something that I think we should do more of.

Ronny:

I can't more than agree. Collaboration, coming together, thinking of ourselves as an ecosystem and not countries—I think it's good. We're actually the Nordic region. If we're so proud to say that all the time, we also need to live it and do it. I see a lot of possibilities there. It's impactful ventures like yours that are leading that change because you're concretely giving opportunities for more and more people to come to work together. Then remember to employ a couple of Finns as well—and maybe Danes even.

Thomas:

I have one Finn in my team at the moment. We're talking to Finnish investors right now. I'm in Norway to talk to Norwegian investors. There are lots of possibilities.

Ronny:

That's the beauty of the future. It's full of possibilities, and it just requires a bit crazy, forward-looking entrepreneurs who are willing to do the hard things. I'm super thankful to hear what you're working on.

With that said, do you have one sentence or one topic you would like to lift up for inspiration here in the end?

Thomas:

I mean, we can do this stuff.

Ronny:

I love that. We can.

Thomas:

We need to lift our eyes from the day-to-day things. Particularly politicians—I'm deeply disappointed with our politicians who aren't able to lift the whole discussion up to the proper next level. Let's do it for them.

Ronny:

In fact, it's just about doing. We just need to get it done.

Thank you so much for joining. I'm super excited to see you tomorrow in the Solution Stage program. I wish you all the best luck and have an impactful event.

Thomas:

Thank you, and thanks for bringing me over here.