As of 1 January 2004 Innovation Norway took over the tasks of the Norwegian Tourist Board, the Norwegian Trade Council, the The Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund, SND and the Government Consultative Office for Inventors, SVO.

The state owned company employs more than 700 people. Innovation Norway has offices in all the Norwegian counties and in more than 30 countries world wide. The head office is situated in Oslo.

Innovation Norway promotes private- and socio-economic profitable industrial development throughout the country and triggers the commercial opportunities of the districts and regions through contributing to innovation, internationalisation and promotion. The strategy states that three areas will be given priority: SME growth, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation milieus. The latter includes programmes and schemes promoting network-based innovation processes, in clusters, business networks and other forms of partnership between businesses, R&D-institutions and public sector.

Innovation Norway launched the first Norwegian cluster programme, Arena, in 2002. In 2006 a second programme was implemented, The Norwegian Centres of Expertise (NCE). Both are national programmes supporting regional clusters. The NCE Programme targets the most dynamic and growth-oriented clusters (“world-class clusters"). The Arena Programme promotes cluster development in a broader range of regional partnerships. Both programmes are based on annual calls for proposals and an open competition between cluster initiatives. In 2009 Arena is involved in 22 cluster initiatives; NCE is involved in 12.

The cluster programmes are jointly owned by three national innovation agencies; SIVA, the Research Council of Norway and Innovation Norway, with the latter acting as the main operator. A programme management team staffed with five persons is organized as a part of the Department for Collaborative innovation.