Oslo Business Region — City-Owned Startup & Scaleup Growth Agency

Oslo Business Region (OBR), now rebranded as Oslo&Co (osloandco.no), is a limited company 100% owned and funded by the City of Oslo through its Department for Culture and Business Development. Its mandate is to strengthen Oslo's startup and scaleup ecosystem by attracting international investment and talent, connecting growth companies to global markets, and building Oslo's international brand as an innovation hub.

The centrepiece of OBR's measurement framework is an annual Startup and Scaleup Report commissioned from independent research firm Menon Economics. The 2023 edition found that the Oslo region is home to 2,051 startups and growth companies employing 14,300 people — meaning 1 in 10 new jobs created in the Oslo region over the past decade came from tech startups. Startups and scaleups account for NOK 12.3 billion in value creation (approximately 2% of total regional value creation), and this figure has nearly doubled since 2010. The city hosts 188 scaleups and 6 unicorns. In 2022, scaleups held NOK 26.9 billion in paid-in capital.

OBR's core services include: (1) the SmartOslo pilot-matching programme, which pairs startups with city entities for projects in health, digitalization, mobility and climate, providing matching grants of NOK 50,000–1,000,000 per project; (2) investor-matching and internationalisation support connecting Oslo scaleups to London, Brussels and other European investment hubs; and (3) Oslo Innovation Week, which in 2024 attracted 16,000+ attendees across 60+ events featuring 200+ startups.

The annual Menon measurement loop is a structural innovation — most city development agencies lack an independent, recurring study that tracks value creation, employment and capital at ecosystem level, making OBR's accountability mechanism genuinely distinctive.

Sources: https://oslobusinessregion.no | Menon Economics 2023 report: https://menon.no/uploads/images/2023-141-Startups-and-scaleups-in-the-Oslo-region-2023-1.pdf

Read the full analysis: https://oslobusinessregion.no