Our radical collaboration approach
As infrastructure challenges grow more complex, collaboration across public and private sectors has never been more important. In this interview, Infranode’s Founding Partner and CIO, Philip Ajina, shares why radical collaboration is at the heart of Infranodes’s investment approach and how it can help build more resilient infrastructure for the future.
How do you define radical collaboration?
For Infranode, radical collaboration is about rethinking how we deliver infrastructure in a changing world. Despite strong public infrastructure systems in the Nordics, decades of underinvestment have left a significant gap. In other words, the traditional model where the public sector carries full responsibility no longer holds. Instead, we need shared solutions. We think of radical collaboration as an ecosystem in which public and private actors play distinct roles, but where collaboration and interdependence make the infrastructure system resilient, efficient and capable of evolving over time.
What role does radical collaboration play in Infranode’s investment approach?
For us, it is as much a mindset as a model. We work across public and private boundaries with a genuine long-term commitment. What distinguishes our approach is our close-knit partnerships, in which we work in an integrated manner with our public sector counterparts to address whatever comes our way. Radical collaboration enables greater societal value by combining the strengths of the public and private sectors. In this model, municipal partners retain strategic control and participate in value creation, while private partners provide expertise, operational efficiency, and capital.
Where can radical collaboration have the greatest impact in today’s infrastructure landscape?
Radical collaboration can be applied across sectors, geographies and both new and existing infrastructure. Its strength lies in flexibility, not standardisation. A strong example is our portfolio company Hafslund Celsio in Oslo, where public authorities at both national and municipal level, global private companies and investors, including Infranode, work closely together to deliver cutting-edge energy solutions that accelerate the Nordic Net Zero journey. To us, this is radical collaboration in action.
