Your Royal Highness,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I appreciate the opportunity to address an audience that has a different focus from the trade and business representatives I normally meet.

Industrial design and entrepreneurship are important subjects on the agenda in the Ministry of Trade and Industry. In Norway, as in many other western countries, innovation and entrepreneurship are priority areas for the Government. Since we have traditionally been a primary goods-producing country, with fish, aluminium, and in the last decades oil and gas as main commodities, we have not been forced to be as innovative in product development and design as many of our trade partners. As we realize that petroleum reserves will not last forever, and we have an expensive welfare system to maintain, exploring other ways of securing our future has become a matter of necessity.

In 2003 the Norwegian Prime Minister launched a vision of Norway as one of the most innovative countries in the world by the year 2010. This implies being in the lead internationally in important areas such as knowledge, technology and wealth creation. One important ambition is to create a culture for entrepreneurship and innovation throughout the country.

Important elements to carry out the vision are enhanced focus on research and development for developing and improving high-tech and knowledge-based production, but also an increased emphasis on skills in entrepreneurship and design.

These are areas where Norway, along with a number of other countries, has large potential for improvement. I would like to elaborate a bit more on our efforts to advance on these grounds.

The Norwegian government has worked out a Comprehensive Innovation Policy where we focus on opportunities based on our assets: Rich natural resources, a highly educated population, a solid and stable economy, high ICT-penetration, strong knowledge and commercial clusters in many areas. To achieve the high ambitions in this policy, we need to mobilise a broad range of actors: Apart from public sector administration and institutions we need entrepreneurs, companies, research institutions, educational systems and private capital to get involved.

Regarding the educational system, the Government will in a few days launch a national strategy for entrepreneurship in education. In this plan the Government puts forward several new and concrete initiatives designed to promote education and training for entrepreneurship. The plan addresses the entire educational system from primary school to college and university level, as well as teacher training. The Government’s ambition is to place the Norwegian educational system among the world’s best systems in education and training for entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship is about creating something new and being innovative – and you’ve been watching a few examples on the screen behind me. Entrepreneurial initiatives are often involved with considerable risk and uncertainty. As new enterprises are major providers of employment, innovation and wealth creation, the Government has a role in fostering entrepreneurial attitudes and behavior. Entrepreneurship education has been identified as an important factor in this respect. National governments as well as international organizations, such as the EU, the OECD and the World Economic Forum, have taken numerous initiatives and launched several programmes in this field. Innovation is knowledge-based, and knowledge is international. I believe that international cooperation and networks are crucial in order to give and get inspiration and achieve real progress in this area.

Your own forum gathered here today is an example of an international network that I am convinced brings inspiration and further development to the participants. Design is today a significant factor in entrepreneurship and vice versa, which is exactly what you have brought to the agenda of your conference. Entrepreneurship is not only about starting up new companies, but also about turning “old” products into new ones, or using industrial design to make a product more attractive. The drinking water industry is an example of how design can provide a unique identity and create an image related to different brands of a product as basic and uniform as water.

The challenge for Norway is to make our executives realize the potential gains of utilizing design and the creativity embodied in it in a proper way. Today more than 40 % of all companies ignore using professional designers in product development or production. A common cause for neglecting design is the perception of design as purely decoration, and not a way of providing higher value to customers.

Many of the participants here today are staff at design and architecture schools. You have a particular responsibility for improving utilization of creativity. The design and architecture students have already proven their creative talents by being accepted at your schools. However, many of the students lack the incentives and experience for transferring creativity to commercial business.

Companies using design as an integrated part of their strategy and product development may achieve lower production costs, more efficient use of raw materials, increased user-friendliness and improved branding of their products. Effective use of design is thus instrumental in achieving higher profits, and this claim is well documented. A recent Danish study based on interviews with 1000 executives showed that companies being effective users of design had a significantly higher share of their income from exports and 22 % higher gross margin than other companies. The British Design Council has found even more significant gains when comparing “effective users of design” with other companies over a 10-year period.

To conclude, I would like to draw your attention to this particular area of town where we are gathered today. This area, which used to be an old industrial area with factories utilising the river, has gradually turned into a center for creative businesses, architecture, technology, media and design. The Norwegian Center for Design and Architecture will be established here this fall, which makes 2004 an important year for national design efforts. With the localization of this center next to creative schools such as the Oslo School of Architecture and the Oslo National College of the Arts as well as the Design Council and other creative centers, this area will truly deserve the name Akerselva Innovation Park. Several new high-tech companies are also established here. The synergies between creativity and innovation, educational institutions, businesses and government efforts are exactly what we must exploit to achieve the ambitious goal of making Norway one of the world’s most innovative nations by the year 2010.

I wish you good luck with the conference here in Oslo and your further work with education in design and entrepreneurship!

Thank you for your attention!