Recap: “Oslo: State of the City 2024” launch event
A full house gathered on 30 April at the launch event for “Oslo: State of the City 2024,” a report that measures how the Oslo brand competes internationally, based on 800 city benchmarks, rankings and data sources. The event was hosted by TeamOslo, a collaboration between Oslo Business Region, Oslo Region Alliance and VisitOSLO.
Anita Leirvik North, Vice Mayor of Culture and Business Development, City of Oslo, kicked off the launch with a look at Oslo’s global position and ambitions for the future. Overall, Oslo is becoming more attractive to investors, professionals, students, event organisers and visitors. The city thrives in areas such as liveability, sustainability, career fulfilment, and easy travel.
“Oslo is now a top ranked city more often than any city of its size in the world.”
Dr. Tim Moonen from Business of Cities, highlighted key insights from the report. Standouts in Oslo’s innovation ecosystem compared to other cities are the blue economy, science specialisms, the improved track record of scaleups, and availability of risk capital.
The data shows, however, that Oslo is slipping in some areas. Oslo region is rated less cost competitive for business and mobile talent. Other cities are ahead for scientific output, fluid university-industry links, collaborating across borders, and meeting the skills demands of their innovative businesses.
The challenge going forward is to align global perceptions of Oslo with performance to help drive diversification of Norway’s economy, increase resilience and share progress, accomplishments and contributions.
Building Oslo’s brand internationally is in part dependent on conscientious urban development (placemaking), leveraging the city’s flagship brands, and consistent communication by local organizations to communicate Oslo’s values: pioneering, enriching and real (ref: Oslo brand guide).
Kim Reksten Grønneberg, Director of Communications and Marketing at the Nobel Peace Center shared how the Nobel and Oslo brands go hand in hand to support and communicate peace and democracy, where Oslo continually tops the ranks worldwide.
Kristina Finne, Chief Commercial Officer at MUNCH shared how a cultural institution like MUNCH draws thousands of visitors annually, providing a platform for the city to attract visitors, talent and investment. “We bring MUNCH out to the world and the world home to Oslo,” she underlined.
This year’s report, commissioned by Oslo Business Region, is in a new slides format to enable public and private organisations to easily integrate data and insights into other presentations.
See photos from the launch event at Klimahuset (Climate House) here. Photos by Ole Onstad.