Innovation and Innovation Policy in Norway 

Overview of Innovation Policy

The economic performance of Norway has for several years been consistently very good with high productivity, low structural unemployment, low inflation, high wealth creation and surpluses in the balance of payments. The oil and gas sector provides a solid contribution to this macroeconomic success, but also other sectors, such as manufacturing and private and public services perform very well. Like for most other countries the financial crisis and the slowdown in the global economy are contributing to a fall in activity in the Norwegian economy, with the export industry being the most strongly affected. The Norwegian economy is still however performing relatively well, with a slow increase in unemployment and stable state finances. 

To mitigate the effects of the crisis the Storting has approved extraordinary fiscal policy measures, which together with the fiscal policy part of the national budget for 2009 equates to a stimulus of 2.3 per cent of the GDP for mainland Norway. A sizable part of the crisis package are investments to stimulate innovation in trade and industry. This includes budget increases for a number of support schemes under Innovation Norway, the research Council of Norway, the export credit agency GIEK and the state owned investment company Argentum. The maximum deductible support amounts under the R&D tax credit scheme (SkatteFunn) have been raised. Moreover, the stimulation package may lay claim to some “green profile” due  in particular to appropriations of in total €120 mill for energy efficiency measures and clean energy.

The Norwegian innovation performance, as measured by the European Innovation Scoreboard Indicators (EIS) has over the years been relatively low, in contrast to the very good macroeconomic performance of the country. During the last five years Norway has been part of the EIS group of “moderate innovators” with innovation performance and average annual growth in innovation below the EU27 average. A number of non-innovation related parameters seem to have an indirect, considerable impact on the ability of the Norwegian economic system to innovate and create economic value.

In December 2008 the Government published its first White paper on Innovation policy, with the title “An Innovative and Sustainable Norway”. While enhancing conditions for competitive enterprises is a core objective of the Government’s innovation policy, the White Paper also addresses broad issues of innovation in the public sector, in particular in the health sector. The Government intends to establish two new Councils, one for environmental technology, and one for innovation in small and medium size enterprises. Moreover, the Government aims to increase private investments in R&D, and to strengthen earlier initiatives for design and tourism. The paper builds on a broad consultation process, by which a large number of innovation stakeholders and several ministries have been involved. In the paper the government also announced the evaluations of Innovation Norway and SIVA (The Industrial Development Corporation of Norway) to be undertaken in 2009. 

The new White paper on research policy, “Climate for Research”, presented end of April 2009 emphasizes research and innovation as important tools for solving global challenges related to climate change, energy, environment, sea and food safety. The paper, which to a large extent follows up the policy goals of the previous white paper on research from 2005, emphasizes the goal to provide a strong basis for industry and innovation in economic sectors where Norway has a competitive advantage. These sectors are: food, marine, maritime, tourism, energy, environment, biotechnology, ICT and new materials/nanotech. The paper announces that the Research Council of Norway will be evaluated.    

 

 

Who Is Who

Senior Official(s) for Norway
Bent Sunde
Correspondents for Norway
Egil Kallerud
Lisa Scordato




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Innovation Performance

 Performance in Innovation Scoreboard 2008

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 List of relevant websites