Nils Haga
Kjeller Innovasjon AS
Lillestrøm
Norway
Introduction
ESA Business Application Ambassador Norway represents Kjeller Innovasjon AS, a well-known innovation company celebrating 30 years of helping R&D institutes turn their results into scalable international companies. Kjeller Innovation operates several deeptech incubators, including ESA BIC Norway, and provides guidance on funding and financing.
If you need support to develop or evaluate your idea for the ESA Ambassador funding scheme, we are more than happy to help you. The ESA Business Application BASS) funding can be 75% for SMEs.
The new Ambassador function was started 2025 and is led by a highly competent team comprising more than 50 years of top-level industrial experiences ranging from finance, oil & gas, automation, IT/software/AI, R&D and innovation companies.
Some selected areas of space technology utilisations are energy, smart societies, maritime and dual use.
What is the most notable achievement that you had so far?
One of our main targets is to develop an ecosystem of SMEs interested to explore and implement space technologies in their businesses. The ecosystem represents a wide range of non-space sectors. We have already supported Norwegian companies throughout the process of identifying a unique opportunity, develop the case and corresponding application (APQ) to the Full Proposal and contract negotiations.
Norway has a long track record in the space sector regarding communication and shipping. Our capital Oslo is overall the fifth highest ranked city in the world regarding maritime, after Singapore, Rotterdam, London and Shanghai. The annual event Nor-Shipping is coming up as the world’s largest conference and fair targeting the maritime sector, a natural place for the ES Ambassador Norway to be.
Norway has furthermore a well-developed industry of electronics and chips, and smart societies including security and dual use are scaling fast.
The network and link with ESA
Clusters of energy and maritime like ESA BIC Norway (startups), Arctic Phi-lab (Arctic research projects), H2Cluster, Energy Valley, Norwegian Space Cluster, Norwegian Sport Tech association, Igloo Innovation (Lørenskog), Kompetansemeglerne I Norge, Innovation Norway, Norwegian Cyber Security cluster, Total Gruppen/Vaager, Ocean Industry Forum Oslofjord, Fremtidens Industri (Trondheim), KUP (Harstad/Tromsø), Kjeller Innovasjon (Lillestrøm), Startuplab (Oslo), … (and more to come).