Norwegian Government’s institute for modernization and development Innovation Norway argues that Norwegian businesses need to pay specific attention to these six areas if they want to succeed in the future:
•   biobased economy
•   clean energy
•   ocean resources
•   health care
•   creative industries
•   smart cities
With this message Anita Krohn Traaseth, the managing director for Innovation Norway, addressed the audience in her Innovation speech 2016 on Tuesday.
– These six areas are so important because it’s here that Norway has clear competitive advantages, and they are also the answers to the challenges that the world has already defined with UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, says CEO of Innovation Norway, Anita Krohn Traaseth, according to NRK.
In search of “the new oil”
After the oil prices went down and discussions about the cost-effectiveness of oil extraction began, Norway felt the urgent need for innovation and started searching for the new beneficial industries to sustain its economy. NRK wrote in January that the new hope for Norway may represent renewable energy resources, especially hydro power. Moreover, cheap electricity in Norway attracts attention of IT-companies that are forced to search for better opportunities for data storage.
All in all, Norway awaits general “green” shift with deeper exploration of ocean resources, hydro power and other “clean” energy sources, but also development of tech-industry and the concept of “smart cities” with integrated ICT solutions in all spheres.
Also creative jobs and industries will be on demand in the nearest future, since the jobs we know today are most likely will vanish in 20 years from now.
Norway should pull out all the stops
Today three major Norwegian leaders in the sphere of innovations – Innovation Norway, the Research Council (Norges forskningsrĂĄd) and Siva – made suggestions regarding actions that Norway needs to take in order to reset its business and industry. Innovation Norway underlines the importance of focusing on all six industries simultaneously and not choosing only some of them. All these areas should be turned on maximum, because these industries represent Norway’s special competitive advantages.
The six industries containing advantages for Norway were defined after the massive mobilization round, called “Dream Promotion”, conducted by Innovation Norway in 2015. Today the company presents the results of all the contributions. In addition, Innovation Norway has had international meetings with ambassadors and vice consuls from 35 countries on the subject of the spheres where Norwegian business has best opportunities.
– We have received input from many spheres from the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra to the Sami Parliament, – everything that crawls, walks and calls itself Norwegian industry. We welcomed to contribute both established companies and new entrepreneurs in the startup phase, comments Krohn Traaseth to NRK.