ABSTRACT
A venture capitalist from one of the world's largest venture capital firms was in the islands of Orkney. Collaborative business models were one bullet point they repeated, emphasising its uniqueness to Orkney. As an ethnographer attentive to situated knowledge, to how knowledge is done differently in different places, and to ontological differences in world-making, the author's ears prickled as he spoke. They were not the same for Grant, the wily local as well as director of the environmental consultancy, in Orkney as they were for Alec from Silicon Valley. Colin explained that the container had been part of the fishing industry there, but once things were on the island they were hard to get rid of so they made use of them. There are still crowds of business tourists passing through, looking to see how Orkney became OrkneyLab, to understand how it started as the laboratory for the world marine energy industry.
