NEWS

That’s a big reason for a visit by the crown prince and princess of Norway to Silicon Valley last week. They arrived at a small loft space called Innovation House, where Norwegian technology entrepreneurs gave them demos of some of the gadgets being worked on there.

Princess Mette-Marit waved her hand in front of a tablet computer to test an ultrasound-powered control device, and then Prince Haakon put on a pair of Oculus Rift 3-D glasses to take a virtual skydive.

Novel consumer electronics aren’t the typical Norwegian invention. The country is Western Europe’s largest oil exporter, and its economy is heavily dependent on energy production. Innovation is more focused on offshore-drilling techniques than on building the next iPhone.

“A lot of the tech jobs are actually in that (oil) industry,” Prince Haakon said in an interview. “That’s a challenge to find different industries and to develop different parts of our economy.”