NHH establishes a new innovation centre
NHH's new centre DIG aims to become the number one research environment for innovation in Norway. The centre will cooperate with 15 leading businesses and is scheduled to open in September.
The centre Digital Innovation for Sustainable Growth (DIG) will enter into a cooperation with a host of leading businesses and research environments to contribute to digital reorganisation and innovation.
‘In close cooperation with both private and public enterprises, DIG will contribute to necessary reorganisation through outstanding interdisciplinary research. We will show how enterprises must adapt to create better financial results,’ says NHH professor and leader of the DIG centre Tor W Andreassen.
The new centre is scheduled to open in September 2020 and will be based at NHH.
‘Our research will contribute to innovation and development of new products and services in existing enterprises, and lay the foundation for establishing new profitable companies,’ says Andreassen.
BIG AMBITIONS
The DIG centre is a continuation of the Centre for Research-based Innovation (CSI) at NHH. The centre was awarded NOK 80 million in 2011 in SFI (Centre for Research-based Innovation) funding from the Research Council of Norway. In 2019, the centre celebrated eight years of world-class service innovation research.
While the former centre emphasised service innovation and customer relations, DIG will take a broader approach and emphasise different aspects of digitalisation of businesses, their business models and market services, and not least how artificial intelligence can be used in the customer-oriented functions in a way that increases the enterprises’ value capture.
COOPERATING WITH NTNU
The DIG centre currently has 15 partners in academia, business and industry and the public sector. The business partners will contribute approximately NOK 150 million in funding and personal efforts.
DIG recently entered into an agreement with NTNU’s research centre Norwegian Open AI Lab (NAIL) and will become part of their network. Open AI Lab Bergen.
‘The businesses’ competitive advantage has gone from efficient production and logistics to knowledge about customers based on complicated algorithms and learning – artificial intelligence. NAIL is at the forefront of this technology development in Norway. NHH and DIG intend to become the best at understanding how to capture the value of technology in businesses,’ says Andreassen.
‘The cooperation also provides a basis for student and academic staff exchanges, which will strengthen both institutions,’ says the professor.