Digital Life Norway
Publication date: 27 June 2022 | Report language: EN
This is the first report from Technopolis Group in a project called “A roadmap for academic
research-intensive innovation”, commissioned by the University of Oslo (UiO). The project
originates in the activities of the Centre for Digital Life Norway (DLN), but the scope goes
beyond DLN. The project aims at, first, understanding the conditions related to translation of
research findings into products or services of societal and economic value, including to identify
what works well and what does not, and then, to develop vision and an action plan for how to
support increased translation. The project will study all levels of the innovation support system,
from the individual researcher to the institutional and systemic level, but from the perspective
of the digital life sector in Norway.
This first report gives a description of translational research conditions, the innovation system
and the various instruments available for DLN’s researchers in Norway, and the stakeholder
organisations that exist. The perspective shifts between the local DLN level, the national level
and the international level. The report has the ambition to give a picture of the situation and
the system in place, as it is. This part of the project has therefore been labelled ‘AS IS’.
The report contains an extensive review of research and innovation in the biotechnological
sciences and the digital life sciences – the digital life sector – primarily in Norway, but as
indicated, also beyond.
This part of the project was carried out during February and May 2020 and besides the literature
review, it included visits and interviews in Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim, plus a number of
interviews via telephone or other telecom channels. Interviews were made with researchers
linked to DLN, university management representatives, technology transfer office managers,
and other stakeholders, for example representatives at the Research Council of Norway (RCN).
37 interviews were conducted; some were made with two or more people together, so in total
42 people were interviewed. Three workshops with DLN researchers were organised, in Oslo,
Bergen and Trondheim, where research projects were presented.
Both the review and the interviews will be used in and have an impact also on later stages of
the project.
The team at Technopolis Group wishes to thank the interviewees for generously sharing their
views and thoughts, and the secretariat function at DLN for its invaluable assistance and
support.
