Tor Berge is Co-Founder and CEO of Safeback, a Norwegian technology company working within avalanche survival. Growing up with the mountains as a constant part of his life gave him a close understanding of both their attraction and their risks.

Tor did not come from an engineering background. What he had was a problem he could not stop thinking about: most avalanche fatalities are caused by suffocation, so could the time available for rescue somehow be extended?

That question became the beginning of a long journey through collaboration, experimentation, testing and clinical research. The work has since been evaluated in a randomized clinical trial published in JAMA.

At TEDxArendal, Tor explores the journey from understanding a problem to proving whether an idea can actually work, and the persistence required in the long stretch between the two.