Collaborative Innovation in Oslo

How will Oslo stimulate innovation? According to the city government, it will deploy a combination of direct and indirect measures when implementing the climate and energy strategy, summarized in Table 2 (City of Oslo 2016e, p. 5).

Direct measures are a type of measure where the city government of Oslo has considerable control and is capable making its own priorities and taking action in ways that have a direct impact on emissions (City of Oslo 2016e, p. 5).

Oslo’s annual budget, which sets priorities and allocates resources, is a good example of a direct measure. Indirect measures have a more indirect effect on emissions, but are still important as they affect the development and implementation of different tools and measures (City of Oslo 2016e, p. 5). Stakeholder collaboration is an example of an indirect measure that carries the potential of either enhancing the effect of existing measures or creating new and innovative measures that rely on co-production, co-creation and co-governance.

In fact, most of the efforts to reduce emissions rely on interaction with core stakeholders such as citizens, business, private organizations, other municipalities, regional authorities and the state. Knowledge sharing is critical for making well-informed decisions; coordination is important in order to prevent overlaps, gaps and conflicts and to create synergy; and collaboration will help to develop new and disruptive climate solutions and secure ownership of their implementation.