Norway is one of the countries with advanced innovation in the global level. In 2017, its innovation index was at 19th rank, out of 127 countries in total. It was derived from the quality of education and the investment in innovation of both public and private sectors, so it is like a rising star that attract prominent startups from Europe.
The National Innovation Agency (NIA) recently joined the Oslo Innovation Week 2018 during 24-27 September 2018 and had the chance to meet with the global influencers and thinkers, innovation promotion agencies, educational institutes, large businesses and startups.
One of the leading private organizations with advanced innovation like Yara International was a must to visit. The company is an advanced research company specialized in supplementary for plants, animals, chemical substances for factories and fisheries, and farming solutions. It has expanded production into more than 50 countries and distributed its products in more than 150 countries. The company’s first export of calcium nitrate to Thailand began since 1907. Yara revealed that it would be the first company in the world to use unmanned boat in transporting the supplementary for plants under the ‘Yara Birkeland’ brand. It will enhance the efficiency in transportation by 50 times and reduce pollution and inefficiency in car transportation.
The unmanned boat uses hydro-electricity which is a clean energy as power supply. The company spent US$60 million in investment and will start operating in 2020 with the support from private and government agencies.
Kongsberg and the Kalmer companies has helped ship manufacturing in the operating system, especially shipping management solutions that requires overhaul throughout the system when they switch transportation to boat instead of car. The government sector helps in financing the project and regulating the laws.
Yara has also brought innovations to farmers and retailers in Thailand. For example, it introduces kiosks to provide information on the conditions of growing vegetables and fruits to educate retailers. It also provides N Tester, a tool to determine how much supplements that the plants need.
Creating a global entrepreneur
Pal Naess, from Innovation Norway, spoke at the Oslo Innovation Week 2018 (OIW18) that he wanted to advocate and drive the importance of sustainability to drive the changes in organizational strategies. He also stressed that government should increase investment budget in technology and promote cooperation with foreign countries to enhance universal mindsets among entrepreneurs.
He also mentioned about European Green Award 2018 which Oslo has just won, from using technology-driven approaches to sustainability, including digitization of government services to make it more user friendly as well as clean technology.
Isabelle Davodi of Folk Oslo stated that this year’s concept presented the idea of “Collaboration for a Common Goal”. Oslo’s public transport is arguably the most innovative in the world and it will be a link between future innovations.
Oslo also reinforces its prominence in blockchain technology. There are speakers and experts around the world, such as Nathana O’Brien of Singularity U and Obos Viberke who explained that people do not need to understand in-depth details, but need to just understand the overall idea.
The work of blockchain can be compared with Excel Worksheets and Google Sheet in a way that it also has a centralized system. One thing that blockchain can do to improve and change the work is smart contract.
Of course, it is the practice of OIW18 to grant the Innovation Award. The criteria for this are the readiness of the prototype business, which has the effect of addressing the challenges of the society. The first prize was Otoro, a start-up enterprise dealing with solar trading online.
The “100 Pitches Entry Round’’ contest also saw startups from Thailand – Ricult, an agriculture startup and Jasberry, a rice startup joining the contest. There were 64 entries from 17 countries joining.
Personalized supplements, Unmanned Vehicle, and Revitalizing the desert
Another interesting part of the event was ‘Cutting Edge Festival’ which had seminars to present innovations from the University of Oslo, Norway’s top university. The university’s innovations have been implemented in several sectors in Oslo.
Starting with food technology, there is an advanced technology like Genomics and Disruption of Healthcare solution that can provide personalized nutrition and give recommendation on foods that should be taken based on the data from genes and environmental. The data can also be connected to mobile phones in response to individual person’s needs as each individual has different genes, so the digestion is all different.
In terms of transportation, the 3D Vision technology plays a role in autonomous boat transportation. Oslo-based SINTEF has developed an innovative approach to track, monitor and measure large scale salmon farms. This unmanned underwater vehicle can show the depths by using the color indicator on the screen.
For the environmental technology that Norway is trying to innovate to help solve the global desert crisis, Desert Control is a company that has made use of innovations developed to restore the lives of the desert. It uses Liquid Nanoclay (LNC), the fertilizer which has already been granted patent. The fertilizer is used to put into the sand to make the sand become fertile again. This fertilizer is more effective in growing crops than conventional fertilizers. Presently, the company has restored deserts in many countries around the world such as Pakistan and South Africa.
There is also the development of electric-powered race cars. The engineering students from NTNU created and took it to compete around the world, which they can find the best route and it demonstrates the effectiveness of innovation by Norwegian students.
For the government sector, the Norwegian Post known as Posten Norge has used the unmanned vehicles and pushed to regulate the laws that promote the use of such vehicles. It also target to use engines with multiple receivers in replace of drop boxes and mailboxes in the future.
Of course, the advancement of technology cannot miss the machine learning. Lecturer from the University of Oslo is developing these machines to learn to recognize the emotions of human writing or Opinion Mining from Text. It will be another step in the processing of natural language.
In terms of medical, Norwegian physicians have begun to study mathematical calculations for a personal cancer treatment called Mathematics for Personalized Cancer Therapy. Professor Arnoldo Frigessi created a model of patient from computer to simulate the use of various drugs with varying dosage, treatment sequence and side effects of each drug. The model can calculate and recommend the best treatment for patients.
Thai startups created a strong impact
NIA team also participated in ‘Funding for Impact’, which provided opportunity for startups to seek consultation with specific investors who are new enterprises that focus on social and environmental development and have received financial rewards or impact startups.
This group of investors advised that entrepreneurs with business ideas should widen academic knowledge and apply their ideas to create a positive impact to the society. This is because having the business ideas is important to get funding from investors.
There are several impact startups in various fields such as FinTech, long-life science and synthetic drugs.
Experts urge young people to build innovation
Professor Jan Fagerberg shared his views on supporting and promoting ecosystem for Thai startups. He said Thailand is lack of capable human resources so it needs to build and drive young people to learn more about innovation and technology.
The most important innovation policy in every country is to connect relevant agencies to communicate more and work in collaboration among each other.
As for the way to increase the proportion of research and development to GDP, we need to promote the researches and development among both public and private sectors and urge them to work together to achieve the mission.
