Anders Grimstad
Oslo · 59.91°N, 10.75°E

Prototyping
plausible futures.

I'm Anders — AI Strategy Director at Vend. Strategy sets the direction. Prototyping proves it's real. I do both.

Portrait
Current
AI Strategy Director · Department of AI · Vend
Previously
§ 01 — About

A pipeline, not a report. Most foresight work ends at a PDF. Mine ends at a shipped product — or a deliberate decision not to build one.

Practice

I combine strategic foresight frameworks with hands-on experimentation to understand what it takes to build towards preferred futures. We need to understand where we are today, envision where we want to be, and then backcast — identifying the capabilities we need to invest in now.

My background is in strategy. My instinct is to build. This process lets me do both — and the prototypes are better for it.

For a walkthrough of the process and thinking behind our work, watch the video below — or read the framework.

Video
The Hunt 2024 · FINN.no · 22 min
Method — five steps
Signals → Investment
01
Signals & Trends
Scan emerging developments. Identify patterns; assess the trajectory and timing of change before it becomes obvious.
02
Scenarios
Use axes of uncertainty to draft plausible future worlds. Stories about different futures — not predictions.
03
Speculative Concepts
Envision future products and services. Make abstract futures tangible through speculative design.
04
Experiments
Build working prototypes. Test hypotheses through rapid design and technical prototyping. Learn by doing, in weeks not quarters.
05
Investments
Assess each experiment for technical feasibility, financial viability and customer desirability — then decide what earns real investment.
§ 02 — Selected Work

Prototypes that informed strategies and products. Six projects from the Futures Lab era that best represent the signals → ship pipeline in practice.

News Summarization From afternoon experiment to millions of daily readers.

What started as an afternoon experiment — generating Tinder profiles and solving the Swedish högskoleprovet — turned into a product that reaches millions of Scandinavians every day. Using few-shot training and fine-tuning, we created summaries that even fooled our editor-in-chief Gard Steiro, and shipped the prototype straight into production. The learnings from our work on synthetic content generation and LLMs have since spawned multiple products across Schibsted's newsrooms, including VG Short Version, Aftenposten Voice, and VG JoJo.

W-012022–23
News · Production LLM · Few-shot · Fine-tune Role: Lead

Kondo AI-powered marketplace ad creation — from a short video.

Instead of filling out a form, sellers film their product and talk about it. A pipeline of four AI assistants analyzes transcript and images, searches the web for additional context, and drafts a complete classified ad. Built with Seller Experience and Recommerce Engineering at Schibsted.

W-02Fall 2023
Classifieds · Pipeline GPT-V · Whisper · Claude Role: Concept, strategy & feasibility

HomeGPT AI homebuying assistant — because nobody should read 68-page property brochures.

Scandinavians look at 364 properties on average before buying. We applied the Three Horizons framework and built two experiments: an AI broker for market analysis, and a document analysis tool that compares properties from uploaded brochures. With experts from Finn and Qasa.

W-03Winter 2024
Real Estate · Foresight RAG · Three Horizons Role: Concept + build

On-Device AI "Gravity-Defying Sneakers" — a fictional research page, a real browser API.

Prototyped with Chrome's experimental on-device AI APIs. The language model runs locally — handling summarization, Q&A, and personalization with no data leaving the device. The insight: AI should be intrinsic to the experience, not bolted on as a chatbot.

W-04Summer 2024
Browser · Privacy Chrome Built-in AI · Gemini Nano Role: Research

Baseline An old-fashioned phone, modernized as an AI voice-chat device.

Inspired by sci-fi and conversational tech — turned a rotary phone into a tangible interface for voice chat with modern LLMs. Built primarily by summer intern Lucía Montesinos García, with video by Yifan Hu and MVP testing by Eline Wong. A proof that the team ships in short sprints.

W-052024
Hardware · Voice ESP32 · Whisper · TTS Role: Concept, strategy & learnings
§ 03 — Speaking & Media

On stages, in headphones, in print. A selection of keynotes, podcast appearances, and press from 2018 onwards.

Formats

Keynotes & talks

'22
Online News Association · Los Angeles
"15th Annual Tech Trends in Journalism"
'23
The Future of News Media in the Age of GenAI
MCB Future Week · 53-slide walkthrough of the Futures Lab method
'23
Schibsted Future Report — Roadshow
Breakfast events · Copenhagen & beyond
'24
FINN.no · AI opportunities & threats · 22 min
'22+
Speaker, metaverse & emerging media

Podcasts & press

'23
Meet the Press / NBC · Hosted by Chuck Todd · podcast
'24
Professoren & praktikern · Episode 96
'20
Tinius Talks / Tinius Trust
'22
Nettavisen · on synthetic content risks
'22
Journalisten · with Gard Steiro & Inga Strümke
'18
The Post Mobile Era
Schibsted Future Report · publication
§ 04 — Collaborators

None of this is mine alone. Every prototype on this page exists because a team of creative, unreasonable people pushed past incrementalism with me.

With thanks to

I've had the pleasure of leading and working alongside people who challenged and pushed our frameworks, ideas and concepts to something less corporate — and less incremental. The foresight work, the experiments, the prototypes — they happened because of them. Forever grateful.

Current — Vend & DAI Andreas Bengtsson Ian Vännman Niklas Derouche Vilde Opsal Rob Van Sundvert Ebba Lundmark …and all of DAI Former — Schibsted Futures Lab Christopher Pearsell-Ross Lasse Mejlvang Tvedt Eline Wong Yifan Hu Sven Thaulow Simen Eide Marius Olsen Anniken Ore Larssen Arber Zagragja …and a boatload of management trainees, interns and other colleagues throughout the years
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