Where Health Pioneers Find Their Edge

Nonspace, working with strategic partner Uncommon and facilitated by Bergen Næringsråd's Health Expert Group, was tasked with creating a shared brand platform that could bring university hospitals and startups, municipalities and venture capitalists, research institutions and growth companies together under one credible, internationally compelling identity.

This was not a typical branding project. It was architecture work for an entire ecosystem: securing support from more than 40 financial sponsors, facilitating complex stakeholder alignment across the public, private and academic sectors, and building the strategic relationships that would make a fragmented health region visible, coherent and attractive to international talent and capital.

The work began in early 2025, building on momentum from 2024, when Nonspace and Bergen Næringsråd supported Uncommon in securing LSX Nordic Congress 2025, a biotech, healthtech and medtech event that moved from Copenhagen to Bergen and confirmed the region's capacity to collaborate.

Western Norway's health ecosystem has all the ingredients for global impact: world-leading university hospitals, pioneering research environments, innovative startups, strong municipal health services and a culture of collaboration. But these strengths existed in fragments. There was no shared story, no collective identity, no clear way for the outside world to understand what made the region indispensable.

At the same time, Norway's national platform for trade and investment was positioning the country internationally with a clear promise: “Pioneering sustainable health solutions – together!” But the promotion placed Oslo as the primary destination, with little emphasis on Bergen or Western Norway. The region risked becoming invisible in its own national story.

The strategic challenge was threefold.

First, create genuine alignment. With more than 300 organisations from very different cultures, from public hospitals bound by bureaucracy to venture-backed startups moving at full speed, any platform had to earn trust and demonstrate value to very different stakeholders. It could not feel like one sector dominating another, or one city taking credit for regional work.

Second, position without competing. The brand could not set Bergen against the national story. It had to complete Norway's health story, not contest it, and show why Bergen's edge is essential to delivering on Norway's pioneering promise.

Third, design for adoption. Whatever we created had to be flexible enough to work across more than 300 existing brands without overshadowing them, yet distinctive enough to be worth adopting.

Underlying all of this was a fundamental question: could a region that had never collaborated at this scale actually come together? Could we facilitate the alignment, secure the sponsorship and build the relationships that would make this more than another well-intentioned regional initiative that fades after launch?

Strategic Foundation: Edge, Not Centre

Through extensive insight work, we identified the region's strategic position. The work was a synthesis of EY's mapping of the health sector, input from Bergen Næringsråd's Health Expert Group, a comparative analysis of ten regional health platforms in Norway and Europe, stakeholder surveys, meetings with Business Region Gothenburg and Health Capital Helsinki, and a workshop with 22 organisations across the sector.

Norway's strength is its values. Bergen's strength is its edge: where care, research and innovation meet real-world needs.

The region offers Norway something Oslo cannot: a globally relevant testing ground for scalable solutions, a bridge between research and results, a magnet for partnerships built on proximity and collaboration. Not in competition with the national story, but completing it. Not just a region in Norway, but a reason to believe in it.

The positioning was distilled into a set of brand qualities that became the foundation for everything that followed: close to reality, edge-focused, human scale, forerunner mindset, cross-sector by default, rooted and global, and not obvious, but original.

Naming: One Word, Many Channels

We landed on HealthFjords, the platform name for the region's health sector. One word to build brand equity. Plural to represent many channels and the diversity of the ecosystem. Pronounceable internationally. Uniquely Norwegian. Ownable. The fjords as both metaphor and reality: carved by persistent forces over time, meeting points of currents, channels that connect inland depth to open ocean.

Brand Design: The Ripple Effect

Anchored in the force of the landscape, water becomes a symbol of life, growth and lasting progress, a meeting of currents that shape connections. Waves carrying knowledge outward, tides drawing talent and capital in. The visual identity captures movement, reach and collaboration: a single drop's ripple effect all the way to the edge. The identity was deliberately designed with restraint and flexibility, so that it lifts the more than 300 organisations it represents rather than drowning them out.

The Story: A Narrative for All

We wrote a story that captured the culture of the region, the reason to believe and the ambition for the future. A narrative for all, to drive collaboration around a shared focus and inspire growth and attraction nationally and internationally. Working with Bergen-based FIRE Media, we directed the documentation and editing process, with motion graphics and film direction from Nonspace.

Launch Platform: Flag in the Ground

We designed and developed HealthFjords.no and .com as a flag in the ground: the story out in the world as a show of commitment. The site is a launch platform and a guide for everyone in the sector to become part of the region's health ecosystem story.

With open, easily accessible logo downloads through the Brandspace® Brand Manager toolkit, any of the 300+ organisations can show they are part of a collaborative ecosystem.

Ecosystem Building: The Invisible Work

Behind the brand were months of strategic facilitation and relationship building. Nonspace played a key role, alongside Uncommon, in securing support from more than 40 financial sponsors. The sponsor list reads like a map of leaders in Western Norway's health ecosystem, from Bergen Næringsråd and Haukeland Universitetssjukehus to DNB, Novartis and Hadean Ventures.

This was not simply fundraising. It was proof of concept: evidence that the region could actually collaborate at scale, before the brand had even launched.

HealthFjords launched on 3 December 2025 with backing from key players in the region's health ecosystem. University hospital CEOs, university rectors, the mayor of Bergen, the deputy county mayor of Vestland and founders have all publicly backed the platform.

The brand is already fulfilling its dual purpose: uniting the region internally while projecting strength externally. The open Brandspace® toolkit lets all 300+ organisations adopt the endorsement and show they are part of a collaborative ecosystem committed to human-centred, proven and scalable health solutions.

Early momentum is already building. In early 2026, the region's health leaders travelled to Helsinki for collaboration and learning, a relationship founded directly through this work by Nonspace, Jeremy McCrohan at Uncommon and Sverre Simen Hov at Bergen Næringsråd. The platform is already enabling the concrete international partnerships it was built to facilitate.

For Nonspace, HealthFjords represents a decade of development since Media City Bergen, and shows that collaborative sector brands, built on strategic insight and facilitated with patience and rigour, can change how regions compete and collaborate. The work shows our capacity not only as brand strategists and designers, but as ecosystem architects who can navigate complex stakeholder environments and build the alignment that makes ambitious visions possible.

Western Norway now has a clear ambition: to be known as the place where meaningful health progress begins and grows. With HealthFjords, that ambition has a name, a story and a growing community, ready to prove it to the world.