Norut is a national research and innovation based company located in northern Norway.

Norut can
trace their origin back to 1984 were the company was formed under the name Research Foundation
of the University of Troms(Forut), and have over the years merged and expanded to all over
northern Norway and is today comprises of four different departments Norut, Norut Narvik,
Norinnova Technology Transfer and Barents Biocentre Lab. They have 300 employees divided
between their location in Alta, Narvik, Harstad, Bod, Bardu and Troms. They have accumulated a
wide range of knowledge trough research. Their goal, facilitate an environment where local
businesses can have an opportunity to the gain the necessary resources to develop new ideas and
technologies.

History:

In the early 80s all centralised research facilities where located in the southern part of Norway, only
0,25% of funds distributed by Norges Teknisk Naturvitenskapelige Forskningsrd(NTNF) went to
Northern Norway. The desire that local discoveries should be further developed locally, all the joints
from idea to commercial application was the driving force for the collaboration. It was a
collaboration between the University, Collages, and businesses located in the northern part of
Norway who pushed for the idea of a centralised research environment. They succeeded, and in 1984
FORUT was established. Soon after Narvik followed and got their own Technological enterprise in
1986, focusing on material technology and construction techniques.

Structures:

Norinova:

Support at the national level to make universities have a more direct role on the entrepreneurial side
of the educations system resulted in the creation of Norinova. Basically, Norinova is the tool to
commercialize research. One of the functions of Norinova is operating an incubator service in the
science park located in Troms. Where student can get together to discuss and exchange knowledge.
Since 1993, Norinova has been involved in the creation of more than 80 companies.

Barents biocentre lab:

Barents Biocentre lab was created to assist individuals and companies exploring new business
opportunities in the field of biotechnology, long before they can afford their own lab equipment.
Everyone has the opportunity to rent a lab or chemical equipment. Courses and training in the use of
advanced laboratory equipment is provided by BBl. Approximately 650m2 of laboratories are in Siva
Innovasjonssenter Troms available for rent.

Norut Narvik:

Norut Narvik is located in Rombaksveien 47, where they provide laboratory services, networks,
knowledge and assistance in obtaining R&D funding. They do not have any offices at Uit Narvik. Since
this report is more focused on the structures and systems that are in place in Narvik we conducted an
interview with head of Administration at Norut Narvik, Dagfinn Johnsen. He described their role in
the community in great detail.

They primarily focus their research in a way that will hopefully contribute some value to the local
community. Ongoing relations with LKAB, The Norwegian National Rail Administration, Statkraft,
Nordkraft, shell, total and UIt are all designed to hopefully reach this goal.
Uit Narvik has a 50% shareholding in the company, making them an integral part of the direction the
company makes. Making a natural cooperation on subjects that are in both their interest, but no
structure is in place to ensure collaboration between the two. Norut regularly lend their experience
to the school in the form of teaching different courses at Uit Narvik. The content of the courses is
based on guidelines provided by the Norwegian Department of Education and have no goal of
making students more entrepreneurial minded, only enhance students understanding of the subject.

He would describe the relation between Uit, Norut and forskningsparken as such: Uit primarly focus
on education, Norut on research and forskningsparken on commercialising of research. If a student
or faculty member wanted to commercialize an idea he would refer them to forskningsparken.

All the different companies are more focused on the academic commercialization, and have little to
none presence in the education to make students more entrepreneurial minded. It seems that they
have a great offer to student and faculty member who have already come up whit an idea, but we
dont see any concreate processes to make the university more entrepreneurial. It would seem that
the university defines itself more of an education tool where they want students to acquire
knowledge, not venture on with a start-up company. This can somewhat be confirmed by E.Oftedal
and L.Foss in their case study UIT The Artic University of Norway, Challenges at the Artic
crossroads.

The scientists are mostly not interested in commercialisation. Thus, it is necessary to make it
more lucrative for researchers to pursue their ideas. If we only can get them to submit their
ideas and disseminate innovation.... We work with researchers and professors. Most of them
are interested in teaching and publishing, which is what they are measured on in their
environment. Unfortunately, no system gives them recognition for patents or driving
innovative business, so this is a political issue. Obviously, they have some small incentives of
getting financial rewards sometime in the future, since the invention might yield returns. In
the short term, there are no incentives for encouraging them to commercialise their ideas
and thus provide society with innovations. This is a fundamental problem.

https://uit.no/Content/454154/PhdProjectREUgroup2016.pdf Lene foss

http://norut.no/en Norut

http://norut.no/sites/default/files/2009_03_16_norut_25_ar.pdf Norut historie