Collaboration, Learning, Innovation and Regional Development in Norway: The Systems Perspective

Collaboration and learning play an important role in innovation and development of regions within a country. Research Council of Norway administrates a large innovation programme (called VRI) to facilitate this kind of development. The programme is operative for 10 years, from 2007 to 2016, and is implemented in 15 regions. One of the means that is applied is competence brokering. The basic idea of competence brokering is to improve collaboration between companies in the regions, research and development (R&D) institutions, and public agencies in order to facilitate innovation and value creation in the regions. The major characteristic of competence brokering is to assist companies to obtain the R&D knowledge and apply it. The aim here is to carry out company specific projects. The projects are conducted under the supervision of a broker, however the company is responsible. R&D personnel are hired to work in the project. Fifty per cent of the cost of hiring the R&D personnel is paid by governmental founding. Companies can participate as single or in network with more companies. The company specific project may be a pre-study for a larger and more expensive innovation project, or the project may solve a specific problem that the company has. A wide range of possible innovation projects can also be carried out - for instance, in design, product development, process development, knowledge management, innovation strategies, etc. The paper will present the Norwegian approach and experiences of competence brokering in regional innovation and development from the systems perspective. Systems perspective focuses not only on the elements that constitute a system, but also interactions between the elements. Furthermore, the systems perspective is closely related to learning in organizations. The paper will look at the experiences of competence brokering, and describe the interactions between different actors in the process of competence brokering when the process establishes a system for collaboration, learning and innovation. The paper will present the aspects of: (1) Competence brokering process and facilitation methods of the collaborative endeavour, (2) Looking at competence brokering from the systems perspective. The paper will also present case study in this regard. The paper is based on reflection on experiences and literature study. The first is an experienced competence broker who has worked in several regional development programmes for more than 20 years. In this regard, the study on which this paper is built, will present elements of action research, at least to a certain extent.