Norway’s capital city, Oslo, is home to a thriving start-up ecosystem that captures the best of Scandinavian ingenuity and originality.

As well as a buzzing start-up scene, Norwegian capital Oslo is considered a marvel of the technology world for a number of reasons. The nation – made particularly wealthy because, unlike Ireland, it did not sell off its oil and gas rights willy-nilly – boasts one of the largest concentrations of privately owned electric vehicles in the world.

Norway is also investing heavily itself in the future and has created a €100m investment fund called Norwegian.ai to support artificial intelligence (AI) projects.

Key groups such as Startup Norway, founded and led by passionate entrepreneurs, give the ecosystem a sense of community and cohesion while Oslo’s start-up ecosystem boasts a lively events calendar.

There are events such as Startup Weekend Oslo, held three times a year, while the Oslo Business Region holds Oslo Startup Day on a monthly basis. Mesh Afterwork is a monthly drinks event held every first Friday while Bubble Bar is a set of concepts for the start-up community organised by founders for founders. There are also nights such as Product Tank focused on product designers and the user experience (UX) tribe. For those who care about the environment, there are events such as Sustainability Jam Oslo and Green Drinks Oslo.

Startup Sauna Oslo is a one-day coaching event that takes place two months ahead of the accelerator programme in 20 cities across the Nordics, Eastern Europe and Russia while Startup Grind Oslo is the local chapter of the start-up community.

The city also has a good number of accelerators, including Angel Challenge, 500 Nordics, MashUP Norway, TheFactory, Techmakersand Norselab, as well as incubators such as StartupLab, Simula Research Laboratory, Siva, Kjeller Innovasjon, Venture Factory and Moonwalk.

And so, here are the ones to watch in 2018.

Greenbird Integration Technology

Greenbird Integration Technology has developed a hybrid cloud platform for big data integrations that empower the smart grid, smart cities and the industrial internet of things. Established in 2010 by Thorsten Heller, the start-up supports 80pc of the utilities through its SaaS solution, Metercloud, as well as its Ghostwriter smart meter simulation technology. Greenbird raised €4.5m in funding last year through Statkraft Ventures and ETF Partners.

This is an excerpt from article written by John Kennedy – read the full article here