Norway's enterprises spend $7.2bn in innovation in 2014

Norway's enterprises reported innovation expenditure of 59.7 billion kroner (7.2 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014 and 5.9 percent of the enterprises' combined turnover in the same year came from product innovations introduced during 2012-2014, the country's statistics bureau said Monday.

In-house research and development (R&D) was the most common work undertaken, reported by 65 percent of the product and/or process innovation active enterprises with a total of 26.2 billion kroner, Statistics Norway said in its report on innovation in the business enterprise sector.

Thirty-five percent of the product and/or process innovation active enterprises purchased R&D services from others, at a cost of roughly 7.5 billion kroner, the bureau said.

R&D expenditures in total account for 56.5 percent of the overall innovation expenditure, it added.

Acquisition of existing knowledge (non-R&D) from other enterprises or organizations was also done by 35 percent of the product and/or process innovation active enterprises at a total cost of 3.3 billion kroner, according to the report.

Acquisition of machinery, equipment, software or buildings for innovation activities was the second most common task undertaken during the period, with 58 percent of the enterprises reporting this at an aggregate cost of more than 15 billion kroner (1.8 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014.

The rest of the innovation activities surveyed are not broken down into separate expenditure categories, but overall these activities, including design, training for innovative activities, market introduction of innovations and all other costs, were reported totaling 7.2 billion kroner.