Pre-projects to Mobilise Trade and Industry for Research

Companies with a registered business address in Oslo municipality that have limited research experience and are working on developing new products, processes or services can apply for funding under this call.

Companies that are, or have been, project owner for a main project funded by the Research Council of Norway, a Regional Research Fund (RFF) or the research programme of the European Union in the past five years are considered experienced R&D companies in this context and cannot apply.

Requirements for project owner

The company is the project owner. The project administrator is the person in the company who is authorised to represent and commit the organisation in relation to the City of Oslo.

The applicant company shall be the project owner in the application form and must approve submission of the application. If the application is a collaboration between multiple organisations, the organisation acting as project owner shall submit the application on behalf of all the partners.

Requirements for principal investigator

There are no formal qualification requirements for the principal investigator. The principal investigator’s professional competencies and suitability for implementation of the project will be assessed by the administration.

Employment requirements

The principal investigator must be employed by the project owner or by one of the partners.

Requirements for R&D providers

The research organisation shall be registered as an R&D provider on the application form. We use the Research Council of Norway’s list of approved R&D providers here.  Only R&D environments shown on this list can be R&D providers.

Foreign public universities and institutions can also be R&D providers. It must be documented and described in the project application that the foreign R&D provider has academic competence in the field.

You can apply for support to cover the actual costs necessary to implement the project.

The project shall comprise activities that fall within the categories of industrial research or experimental development. You will find a more detailed description of what this entails in Article 25 of the Commission (EC) General block exemption Regulation.

The following costs may be included in the project:

• Payroll and indirect expenses incurred by the company;
• Procurement of R&D services from approved research organisations or foreign R&D providers
• Other operating expenses

Detailed and important information about what the budget shall include can be found on this webpage. 

Calculation of support

The company can apply for up to NOK 300,000 and up to 70 per cent of the budgeted project costs. The minimum amount that can be applied for is NOK 100,000.

At least two-thirds of the support amount must be used for the procurement of R&D. For example, if the support amount is NOK 300,000, this means that NOK 200,000 must be used for the procurement of R&D.

The extent of support (aid intensity) for the company’s project costs depends on the project’s content and type of R&D activities as these are defined in the rules for state aid, including the size of the company, the project’s research activities and collaborative constellations.

The extent of support may thus vary from 25 to 70 per cent for approved applications.

Type of business/type of activity	Industrial Research	Experimental Development
Small business	70%	45%
Medium-size businesses	60%	35%
Large businesses	50%	25%

 

The final amount of support for approved applications will be specified in the letter of grant commitment.

Conditions for funding

Support to “undertakings” are state aid. In this context undertaking means any actor that operates economic activity by offering goods and/or services in a market. When an undertaking receives funding covering parts of its' project costs, either as project owner or as a partner in the project, this must take place in accordance with the General Block Exemption Regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014).

Read more about the conditions for allocation of state aid.

Own funding

The company itself must provide at least 30 per cent of the project cost as own funding. Own-funding in projects can be in the form of cash and/or in-kind contribution such as personnel expenses and indirect costs. Personnel expenses and indirect costs must be calculated based on actual costs. You can find a guide on how to calculate personnel expenses and indirect costs for industry and commerce here.

Only wages paid by the project owner may be included in personnel expenses. The project owner and any other partners that make their contribution in the form of own funding must be up to date with payment of employers’ contributions and tax deductions. Unpaid in-kind contributions cannot be considered as co-financing.

The grant cannot be used for

• Survey of research literature
• Purchase of equipment
• Market research and marketing
• Establishment of networks, clusters, or consortiums
• Writing of applications to national and regional programmes

Reporting and disbursement of grant

We disburse 75 per cent of the grant at the start of the project.

The remainder is paid out at the end of the project, on the condition that the final report and the project accounts are approved. The actual grant is based on expenses in the project accounts that are entered in the project owner’s or project partners’ accounts.

The application must be created and submitted via the online application form in Research Council of Norway’s application portal: My RCN web. Use the button “Create application” to create your application.

You can save and make changes to the application whilst you work on it. The application cannot be amended once it has been submitted.

The application and all the appendices must be in Norwegian or English.

• All appendices must be in PDF format.
• Only applications submitted via MY RCN web will be processed.

Mandatory attachments

• Project description of max. 5 pages. Use the standard template provided by your competence broker. We only assess project descriptions written in this template.
• CV for the principal investigator
• Form for partner information. This shall also be completed for the company that is applying. Use the standard template that can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.
• Self-declaration for private companies. Use the standard template that can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

Optional attachments

• CVs of key participants in the project

We will not assess documents and websites linked to the application, or any other appendices that are not specified above.

Other conditions

• We allocate funds in accordance with the EEA rules on state aid to companies that participate in projects. The Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development has reported the Regional Research Fund scheme to the ESA pursuant to the regulation on exemption from reporting obligation for state aid Section 1, cf. EEA Agreement Appendix XV no. 1j (regulation (EU) no. 651/2014).
• You must provide information in the application as to whether you have applied for support for the same or a similar project from other public aid schemes.
• Requirements for co-financing and liquidity must be satisfied before funds can be paid out.
• If projects that have received a grant are not completed, or in the event of inadequate reporting, the City of Oslo can demand repayment of the grant.

Innovasjonsgrad
I hvilken grad møter innovasjonsidéen i prosjektet et udekket behov?
• Hvor original og nyskapende er innovasjonen?
• I hvor stor grad har prosjektet potensial for å bringe fram ny kunnskap.

Relevans og kvalitet på FoU-aktivitetene
• I hvilken grad er FoU-aktivitetene relevante og/eller av kritisk betydning for innovasjonen og som bidrag til forprosjektet?

• I hvilken grad er det potensial for at resultatene fra forprosjektet kan bidra til
– verdiskaping i norsk næringsliv og/eller offentlig sektor?
– å løse betydelige nåværende og fremtidige samfunnsutfordringer, også med henvisning til FNs bærekraftmål?

Hvor god er
• Kvalitet på prosjektplanen med mål, arbeidspakker, milepæler, ressursinnsats og relevante risikovurderinger
• Kvalitet/kompetanse til prosjektleder og eventuell prosjektgruppe
• Organisering, med roller og ansvarsdeling, styring og strategisk forankring
• Budsjett og finansiering

Plan for utnyttelse av FoU-resultatene for innovasjonen:
• Hvor god og realistisk er bedriftens plan for videre utvikling av ideen når forprosjektet er gjennomført? (f.eks. i form av hovedprosjekt)

Hvor godt vil forprosjektet bidra til at bedriften får erfaring med å ta forskning i bruk i sitt innovasjonsarbeid?

Hvor godt er forprosjektet i tråd med de regionale satsingsområdene?

Assessment of applications

We first assess whether the submitted applications satisfy the formal requirements regarding the applicant, research partner, that they have been written using the correct templates, etc. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements may be rejected.

We then assess the quality of the applications according to the criteria above. In this call the applications must have a minimum score of 4 on all criteria to be eligible for funding. When the quality of the applications have been assessed, they are presented to the board of RFF Oslo for the final decision.

The board of the Oslo Regional Research Fund (RFF) decides whether an application is approved or not.