Attractive places for women, flexible housing models, sustainable cabin areas and the town centres of the future are some of the challenges in this year´s Gnist programme. Soon, these challenges will meet possible solutions from smart city related businesses.

The municipalities of Åseral, Lom, Vanylven, Sortland, Suldal, Nome, Sogndal/Luster/Aurland, Nore og Uvdal and Skjervøy have been selected. They were among the 32 applicants from all over Norway.

Nordic Edge, DOGA and The Centre of Competence on Rural Development picked the challenges, together with the regional authorities, which also contribute with financing and support for the municipalities.

The selected municipalities will now get help with design and other relevant competencies, to better form the challenges, highlight the possibilities and resources, create new solutions and focus on developing sustainable solutions.

“Gnist is a great showcase of municipalities eager to take part in innovation and new business development by challenging themselves and companies involved in product and service development for the future”, said Stig Finnesand, CEO of Nordic Edge.

“For us in Nordic Edge, many of the solutions will go to the core of what Nordic Edge is all about. Namely, innovation towards smarter and more sustainable cities and communities. We look forward to seeing good, scalable solutions that will speed up the green transition”, he added.

Nordic Edge and DOGA will soon reach out to both cluster members and others to find the companies interested in taking part in cross-sectorial teams that can bid for solutions to the selected challenges.

DOGA and Nordic Edge will then, in collaboration with the municipalities, pick out teams that will work more closely on the challenges. These teams, nine in total, will then receive 300 000 kroner each for developing the solutions for their respective municipalities. This will happen as a design process adapted to local needs in the period between May and October 2022.