The webinar “How to do business with the City of Oslo” on 8 June highlighted a few of the pilot programs and procurement opportunities available to startups and scaleups. There is growing momentum in the city for innovative products and services in areas such as sustainability and digitalization.
Knut Magnus Aasli CEO at Skalar talked about opportunities to scale from Oslo to other municipalities in Norway and internationally. Sissel Hoel from StartOff described how the national program connects startups with public procurement and supports the development of MVPs with funding and expertise. Elisabeth Smith from Innovative Anskaffelser shared tips on how startups can find and apply for relevant RFPs, and Erlend Nyheim from Sammen om en jobb shared his experience with the Smart Oslo pilot program.
To keep the dialogue going and help fast-track public-private collaboration, attendees were invited to take part in OBR’s new Public Private Innovators Network. For more information and to join the network, visit here.
Here are some benefits on working with the public sector, according to Knut Magnus (Skalar):
- Loyal customer base
- Financial stability,
- High confidence in public services
- Norway is highly ranked when it comes to digital services and “Making a product within the sector is extremely valuable also if you want to look abroad in a long term collaboration.”
- Solving real challenges that have direct effect on people
