Artic innovation, worldwide impact: embracing northern challenges to create innovative solutions for the world.

• Author: Krynicki, Adam
• Position: ARCTIC IDEAS

Bestselling books such as the "$100 Startup," "The Lean Startup," and "The 4 Hour Work-Week" tell stories of modern entrepreneurs who quickly turn a startup company into a massive enterprise. Though these stories seem like fairytales, they are quickly becoming the new dogma of entrepreneurs and innovators worldwide.

Traditionally, companies needed a large workforce and regional offices to reach nationwide customers, but recent acquisitions and Initial Public Offering valuations point to a new trend. In this new world, entrepreneurs can provide a product economically and scale up to reach a worldwide audience with just a handful of employees.

Recently, thirteen staff at Instagram turned 551 days of effort into a $1 billion photo sharing business--a value of $77 million per employee. Where Microsoft went from zero to $1 million revenues in three years, Facebook, by comparison, went from zero to $150 million. Twitter was coded and launched within four months, and now it's a company with a valuation of more than $38 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

After seeing this rapid growth, it's not surprising that investors are flocking to e-commerce companies and funding them at nearly three times the rate of companies in other industries. It's also not surprising that many of our nation's great programmers and entrepreneurial minds are dedicating their efforts to building social networks and games after seeing the success of Facebook and Angry Birds.

The modern infatuation with mobile apps and games has earned the ire of some influential figures. Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal, has criticized the recent attention on social media tools by lamenting, "We wanted flying cars--instead we got 140 characters." Neil Degrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, has criticized the apparent focus on software, saying to entrepreneurs, "Society has bigger problems than what can be solved with your next app." Even Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, has been featured on the cover of the MIT Technology Review with the headline: "You Promised Me Mars Colonies. Instead I Got Facebook."

It's easy to dismiss gaming software and social networks as trivial when many problems around the world are more pressing and can't be solved with a social media website or gaming app. Silicon Valley problems have led to Silicon Valley solutions, and in many places around the world, these solutions just aren't enough.

Embracing the Problem

In a place like Alaska, our geography defines our daily challenges. Alaskans are blessed with an abundance of resources, but access to these resources has always been a major challenge.

At more than twice the size of Texas, access to resources is expensive, and the problem is only intensified by Alaska's Arctic and subarctic climates. The state's remoteness drives up costs, as exemplified by the fact that Alaskans face the highest cost of energy per capita, and Alaska has the fourth highest cost of living in the nation behind Hawaii, New York, and Connecticut. In remote areas, emergency medical care is hours away, brownouts are common, and plumbing infrastructure is scarce. Alaska has the lowest food security in the nation and has been featured in National Geographic as the home of...