Norwegian industry is fantastic! We have strong value creation, persistent growth and almost full employment. We have several large, profitable, international companies and a colourful and rapidly emerging undergrowth of new companies.

Innovation Norway and the Norwegian Design Council (NDC) have cooperated for several years in encouraging Norwegian industry to use professional design when developing products and market strategies. By providing advice about design and by referring companies to designers, we now see that more and more companies are using designers.

Innovation Norway has offices in all counties in Norway and in more than thirty countries throughout the world. Here you can meet people with local and international expertise who can help your idea become a business success. At every one of our offices in Norway we employ one person to assist companies with their design-related needs. We also cooperate with the NDC on developing Young Talents because we wish to showcase young, skilled designers and to give them the competence they need to establish and operate their own enterprises.

Professional designers provide companies with entirely new forms of knowledge. Designers are trained to use creative methods to develop new ideas and concepts that solve challenges facing companies. Employing design as a business tool fills customers with enthusiasm, distinguishes manufacturers from their competitors and helps improve companies’ profitability. If more companies are to succeed in this respect, it is important that use of design as a business tool finds acceptance in the company’s boardroom and that this is firmly rooted in the company’s overarching strategy. The question is not whether we should use professional design, but how.

The Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry recently presented its plan for industry-oriented design. “Design and value creation” is an important tool for Innovation Norway and the NDC in encouraging more Norwegian enterprises to use strategic design. We will give assistance in every county in Norway by providing general advice on design-related issues, by helping locate designers for companies’ various development projects and by providing assistance in obtaining funding. We will encourage the continued development of industry, so that our children and our children’s children will have something to live from in the future. And we know that when times are good we must invest in ideas that can create jobs for tomorrow.

We look forward to cooperating with the industry and to seeing increased use of design in the future.
We give local ideas global opportunities.
 

Gunn Ovesen, Managing Director of Innovation Norway