Norway – Social Enterprise Development in the Baltic Sea Region

Street team football produces good results

Combining football with aftercare for people who are experiencing drug-related problems is a form of groundbreaking social work which is proving to be effective.

Street team football is the low-threshold activity that the organization Norsk Toppfotball (“Norwegian Elite Football”) offers anyone who has or has had long term challenges with drug addiction. As of today, 20 of the major Norwegian football clubs have their own street team. The teams offer their players to participate in training as well as matches in their own league and in cups.

The way to improve social entrepreneurship in Norway

In practice: Social entrepreneurship ensures that new ideas and solutions regarding social problems are acknowledged and preserved in a way that make them practical and useful in a long term.

The Norwegian government wants to lay the groundwork for more social entrepreneurship. SESAM (USN) has now given its recommendation regarding the matter.

Learn more here!

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Educational Materials | Library | Norway

SoImpact – tools for collaborative social innovation

Innovation work through collaborative social innovation assumes using different methods for collecting and evaluating results, both regarding values created during the process, and the effect that is a result of the ended process. Measuring effects is demanding, since the causality between effort and effect often is unclear. However, it is important to know whether the resources which are used leads to expected social results and effects.

SoImpact deals with this matter. This tool was first created by SoCentral, and has been further developed during this project. It differs from other methods of measuring effects of social innovation since this tool mainly focuses on measuring results and effects of effort, where the level of causality is high. Soimpact is a tool for choosing and identifying indicators, measuring results and effects caused by the effort put into collaborative social innovation. This tool is a ten-step-process that structures the work, from early definitions of goals, to identifying indicators which can be used for evaluation and analysis.

Find out more here! Only in Norwegian

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Educational Materials | Library | Norway

SAMSON – a tool for collaborative social innovation

Scientists found that most of the Norwegian cases had a low level of maturity. Collaborative social innovation is hard to accomplish in practice. The project showed that the general level of knowledge when it came to collaborative social innovation was low, and that the municipalities struggled to achieve true user involvement in the cases.

By combining theory and experience from the cases, there has been developed a model for local collaborative social innovation. This model has been used to create a digital processing tool for collaborative social innovation, and gives you a picture of where the collaboration stands, and which fields of action you have to work on to achieve real collaborative social innovation.

This tool makes it possible to adjust course during the process, as well as evaluate the process in hindsight, in light of both values and fields of action – what are we doing well, where do we have challenges, how did we correct things during the process, or where did we fail. The model is based on that collaborative social innovation is relational and contextual, and that positions and roles always need to be transparent in order to being handled adequately. This tool must be used by all involved participants together, and will therefore ensure a high level of equality and openness during the process.

For more information, click here! (only in Norwegian)

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Educational Materials | Library | Norway

Let’s do it together! Handbook for local collaborative social innovation

This handbook is written for, and in a Norwegian local context. It is namely the case that in Norway welfare is in fact created mainly locally in the country’s 426 (current) municipalities. It is therefore more meaningful to talk about the welfare municipalities rather than the welfare state in Norway.

Good collaborative social innovation work is characterized by the fact that people with different resources, experience and knowledge work together. In this handbook, we present key concepts and a model for collaborative social innovation with relevant advice and recommendations on how the model, and the knowledge it is based on, can be used.

A sense of reality and the practical relevance of the work are ensured by the fact that five municipalities with six specific social innovation projects have been linked to the project. In addition, a case from Denmark has been used as a reference model.

You find more information here.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Blog | Educational Materials | English | Library | Norway

Female Entrepreneurship in Norway – Development, barriers and opportunities

The report looks at the development of woman entrepreneurship in Norway and the distinctive traits of those who start up their own business. It also identifies several actions public authorities can apply in order to stimulate more women to start their own businesses

Despite the fact that the Norwegian culture is characterized by more equality than the cultures of many other developed countries, the proportion of women to men among entrepreneurs is no higher.

The report, which relies primarily on existing research and already established sets of data, found that social interaction influences women’s entrepreneurship and innovation activity profoundly. Recent studies show that exposure to innovation during childhood has a significant effect on children’s inclination to become an innovator. These exposure factors are particularly strong for girls. It is especially interesting to observe that women are more inclined to become innovators within a specific technological area if they grew up in an area with several female (but not male) innovators within the same area of technology. Moreover, the report found that women face greater demands through screening and information requirements than do men when they want to seek capital. The different language and male dominance in the financial world can also affect the likelihood that good projects proposed by female entrepreneurs will acquire financing.

In order to stimulate increased female entrepreneurship with a potential for scalability and growth, the report presents four concrete proposals for initiatives that public policymakers should consider when designing future policies:

Establish more comprehensive female mentoring schemes
Establish a government-supported women’s investment fund
Remove competitive disadvantages in businesses where women often operate as entrepreneurs
Establish a scheme for commercialization leave at universities and colleges

Read the full study here.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Educational Materials | Library | Norway

Female Entrepreneurship in the Nordics 2020 – A comparative study

Female Entrepreneurship in the Nordics 2020 analyses the reasons behind the low level of female entrepreneurs in the Nordic countries, and suggests several measures that could help change this trend.

The Nordic countries are viewed as forerunners on gender equality and women’s labour force participation. Even though there has been a slow increase in the share of female entrepreneurs in the Nordic countries in recent years, the report from Menon Economics note that there are still far fewer women than men starting businesses in the Nordic countries. This is likely a result of several factors, such as age, the type of industries they establish businesses in, and the willingness to take risks.

Moreover, the report underlines that there are several external factors which make it more difficult for female entrepreneurs to succeed:

Women have less access to role models and smaller networks, which makes them less likely to innovate
If the entrepreneurial culture is male dominated it is difficult for women to succeed
Female entrepreneurs have less access to external funding than male entrepreneurs, which makes it difficult for them to expand
Framework conditions are especially important for enabling female entrepreneurship

In order to stimulate female entrepreneurship, Menon Economics suggest four measures that are believed to be effective in increasing the number of female entrepreneurs :

Establish more comprehensive female Nordic mentoring schemes and networks
Increase female entrepreneurs’ access to capital
Remove competitive disadvantages in industries where women often operate as entrepreneurs
Establish a scheme for commercialization leave at universities and colleges

The report also points to the fact that female entrepreneurs are at risk of being especially hardly hit by COVID-19, and that the length and magnitude of the emergency measures of the Nordic Governments series will impact how fast they will be able to recover.

This study was developed by Menon Economics on behalf of Nordic Innovation.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Blog | Norway

Advantages of Hybrid Organising in Social Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Norway

Hybrid organising within the context of social entrepreneurship is on the rise. At the same time, social entrepreneurial ventures that adopt hybrid organising are often criticized. The literature on hybridity points to particular challenges for social entrepreneurial ventures such as conflicting institutional logics and tensions related to their dual identity and/or mission drift. Drawing on the literature on hybrid organising and social entrepreneurship, in this paper we take a contrary stance and explore the positive aspects of hybrid organising in social entrepreneurship. We ask the following research question: “What are the advantages of hybrid organising in social entrepreneurship, if any”? Using a qualitative approach, this study theorizes two main advantages of hybrid organising: sustainability of the organisational model and efficiency of the organisational model. The article also discusses the implications for theory and practice.

Read the study here.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Blog | Norway

Implementing public procurement of innovations in an organization: lessons from Norway

The purpose of this paper is to explore the drivers, enablers, barriers, key success factors, pitfalls and benefits of implementing public procurement of innovations (PPoI) in an organization.

The study revealed that implementation of PPoI represents significant change in an organization, and thus, it identifies key enablers and barriers that organizations must overcome. Furthermore, the study revealed that implementation of PPoI is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reaping its benefits. Moreover, the study identified key success factors for achieving the desirable results and potential pitfalls that organizations should avoid to ensure that the execution phase is not hurt.

Overall, the findings of the study imply that PPoI and the practices associated with it are valuable to the organizations implementing it and society at large. Thus, time and financial investments and the costs associated with the challenges and barriers of implementing it are justified by the resulting wider benefits and outcomes.

Read the full paper here.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

Blog | Norway

Social inequalities, social trust and civic participation — the case of Norway

Comparative studies have generally demonstrated high levels of social capital in the Scandinavian welfare states. It has also been shown that social capital is generally higher among more privileged groups of people than among less privileged groups. However, less is known about how the different types of social inequalities relate to various types of social capital. The aim of this study is to go beyond the generally high Norwegian levels of social capital and study variations of social capital within a representative sample of the Norwegian adult population. The main question is whether and to what extent socio-economic indicators relate to measures of social capital, that is, social trust and civic participation. The data are based on a representative sample of the Norwegian adult population, comprising 3190 individuals.

The results show that, whereas several of the socio-economic indicators are significant with respect to social trust, it is only the level of education that is significant for both types of social capital. These findings show that the associations between socio-economic indicators and social capital vary, based on the measures applied. Nevertheless, the strong associations between education and both social capital outcomes demonstrate that social capital is not equally available to all, emphasising the importance of social policies and societal institutions in building social capital.

Access the study here.

This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

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