Cuts at Innovation Norway

At meetings with employees on 15 January, management presented the following organisational changes:

We will maintain a presence throughout Norway, close to businesses and our county authority owners. We will continue to have offices across the country and provide strong customer support nationwide. We currently have 10 regional offices and seven local offices. We are considering merging some of these and taking other steps to build larger professional teams and make better use of our combined capacity and expertise. This will result in fewer office locations. We will also remain close to regional businesses in new ways, including by placing more employees within regional business communities and collaborating with innovation hubs and incubators.

We are also reducing central support functions and reviewing how they are organised. The percentage reduction in staff will be greater in support functions than in customer-facing divisions.

Our work with startups is funded through several budget allocations that have been cut in the national budget. This means we will significantly scale back our work for entrepreneurs, with substantially fewer employees working with startups. Funding for the nationwide Startup grant has been cut by almost 50 per cent, while schemes such as Startup grant 3, Scaleup Mentor and grants for ecosystems will be discontinued. We are closing our office in Førde.

Export and internationalisation, including EU advisory services, have been cut by NOK 70 million in the 2026 national budget. As a result, we must reduce the number of export staff and specialist teams at our head office, as well as EU advisors and internationalisation advisors in the regions.

The thematic export initiatives that have been delivered as separate assignments are now gradually transitioning to a different model. We will continue to work with the key export sectors in Norwegian business and industry, but under a different organisational structure.
We have decided to close our office in Sweden. Our other international offices will be less affected.

In addition, some tourism-related positions at certain offices in Europe will be reduced as a result of the NOK 30 million cut to the tourism budget. We will reduce both our tourism activities and the number of employees working with tourism in Norway.

We are discontinuing our work with the cultural and creative industries. We will also scale back some of our work on the EEA and Norway Grants. These grants enable Norwegian companies to carry out projects in partnership with beneficiary countries in the EU.

We will continue our work with Ukraine and maintain a presence in Kyiv in 2026, but we must adapt our activities to the level of funding available.

We will continue to develop simpler, more automated services, but our capacity for digital development will be significantly reduced. We are also making cuts to support functions and reviewing how they are organised.

• Advisory and competence-building services for exports, internationalisation and the EU will be cut by NOK 70 million.
• Funding for our tourism assignment will be cut by NOK 30 million.
• Funding for startup grants, loss provisions for innovation loans and innovation contracts will be reduced by NOK 94 million.
• The grant for environmental technology will be reduced by NOK 72 million.
• The green investment grant will be discontinued, and the NOK 100 million allocation will be cut.
• The lending limit for large loans through ‘Green Industrial Financing’ will be reduced from NOK 5 billion to NOK 4.1 billion.
• The innovation loan scheme for low- and zero-emission ships will be paused.

All parts of our organisation will be affected, but most of the reductions will be in the areas where our remit has been cut, affecting our capacity in these areas.

We are now undergoing a voluntary downsizing process. All employees on Norwegian contracts have been invited to apply for a severance package by the end of January. Management, employee representatives and the Board will continue to assess the impact of the budget cuts and the implications for our office structure, organisation and staffing.

As of October 2025, we had 752 employees across our head office, regional offices, local offices, our Førde office and offices in 22 international markets.