KEU Pre-survey 2006

Innovation Norway (IN) was established on 1 January 2004, and is a merger of the former Norwegian Business and Regional Development Fund (SND), the Norwegian Export Council, the Norwegian Tourist Board and the Norwegian Inventors Guidance Office. Innovation Norway offers products and services that will contribute to developing the rural areas, increase innovation in business throughout the country and profile Norwegian business and Norway as a travel destination.

Oxford Research AS carries out the customer impact surveys for Innovation Norway. The surveys include companies that have received services from Innovation Norway or SND in the years from 1994 with the exception of 1997. For each cohort, a pre-survey is carried out one year after the service was provided and a follow-up survey four years later.

The purpose of the customer impact surveys is twofold. Firstly, it is an internal purpose which is about improving and further developing Innovation Norway's operations. Secondly, there is an external purpose that answers the question "what have we got for our money?".

The customer impact survey consists of a pre-survey and a post-survey. The preliminary survey is carried out the year after the commitment from Innovation Norway is given. The follow-up survey is carried out four years later. The current survey is a preliminary survey of companies that received a service from Innovation Norway in 2006.

A total of 21 services are included in the customer impact survey for 2006. These can be divided into six main groups:

· Grants
· Low-risk loans
· Risk loans
· Program
· Scholarship
· Internationalization

Previous customer impact surveys have been more comprehensive both for the companies that were to respond and for those who read the reports afterwards. At the same time, the answers have varied relatively little over time. The survey for 2006 has therefore been changed to a more module-based form, where the idea is that some key questions will be asked of the companies every year, while others will be asked less frequently following a form of "rolling". For the 2006 cohort, such a module-based system was used, and the companies were only asked about the most central questions in a basic module. This makes the survey shorter and more focused than previous surveys. Oxford Research and Innovation Norway have reviewed the previous forms (which previously could consist of up to 4 different forms) and extracted the most relevant questions for all recipients. At the same time as it has been shortened and rationalized, it has focused on securing the questions necessary to report according to the MRS system (Measures and results management system for Innovation Norway), and ensuring that the questions necessary to carry out the central the parts of the follow-up examination are included in the basic module. The result of this is that the previous categorization of question groups in the questionnaire has been dropped in favor of a collection of the questions in a "main part", in addition to a category that deals with background information about the company.