Contributing to growth
Companies that receive support from Innovation Norway grow more in terms of sales revenues, value creation, productivity and number of employees compared to similar companies that haven’t received such support. In 2021, 95 percent of customers stated that the support they received from Innovation Norway was decisive for the realisation of their projects.
In total, Innovation Norway contributed NOK 10.1 billion to the restructuring and development of Norwegian trade and industry in 2021. According to separate analyses, this helped to trigger additional capital from other funding sources, resulting in a total of NOK 31.5 billion in the form of business development investments.
In addition to triggering funding and capital, it is important for Innovation Norway to measure the effects and results of the activities that receive support. This is done through separate effect analyses. In a survey conducted each year by Economics Norway for Innovation Norway, indicators such as sales revenues, value creation, productivity and the number of man-years in companies that have received support from Innovation Norway are analysed. The analysis compares these indicators with a control group of similar companies that have not received support from Innovation Norway.
Growth
The 2021 analysis shows that Innovation Norway’s customers have an annual average increase in sales revenue of 10.4 percentage points compared to similar companies without such support. The corresponding figures for value creation and productivity are 9.0 percentage points and 4,0 percentage points, respectively. In addition, companies that receive support from Innovation Norway see an annual increase of 5.0 percentage points in the number of man-years.
The figures for 2021 support and show a slight increase in effects compared to the analysis from 2020, the year of the pandemic. In 2020, the figures for the average increase in sales revenues and value creation were 10.3 and 8.7 percentage points respectively, and for productivity and man-years the figures were 4.0 and 3.7 percentage points respectively, also compared to similar companies without support from Innovation Norway. Therefore, the effect measurement continues to show positive and significant effects of the support that Innovation Norway contributes to the development of Norwegian trade and industry.
Sub-goals
In addition to the overall effects, corresponding effects are measured for the three sub-goals that are set for the enterprise; to contribute to more successful entrepreneurs, more companies with growth potential and more innovative business clusters.
The effects for the three sub-goals are described in their respective chapters.
Decisive
Innovation Norway is also interested in measuring additionality, i.e., the extent to which companies experience that Innovation Norway’s contribution has played a decisive role in their project implementation. The customer impact survey – the 2021 preliminary survey, includes companies that received financial support or advisory services in 2021, and was conducted by Oxford Research. The survey shows that as much as 95 percent of those surveyed said that Innovation Norway’s contribution played a decisive role to a large or moderate extent. Close to three out of four companies said the contribution had a strong triggering effect.
This is still at a higher level than before the corona crisis, which suggests that Innovation Norway’s contribution is more important for companies’ innovation and development work in times of crisis. The fact that this performance indicator reflects the crisis that hit Norwegian trade and industry in 2020, the year of the pandemic, helps to strengthen the credibility of the survey itself.