Our innovative companies would not be truly innovative without alternatives to the events canceled by corona measures. There are! The first online knowledge circle and high-tech safari have been completed. With success. Still, the exchange remains different from physical meetings. The challenge: how to stimulate online interaction?
It may be the first ICD Webinar, but as host, program manager Joost Krebbekx deftly navigates the online meeting. As many as 23 R&D professionals participate in this first online Knowledge Circle New Product Innovation. Guest speaker is Ferdinand Coehoorn, Manager of Research & Development at Assa Abloy entrance systems in Heerhugowaard. He reports on the innovation methodologies of five of our companies. This creates a benchmark for New Product Innovation. As in his ‘fleet review,’ Coehoorn holds the companies up to the light in his presentation. Should you split innovation from day-to-day business? Is cooperation with knowledge institutions necessary? And how do you make choices? What do you tackle and what don't you? He asks the questions mainly to trigger, to help initiate interaction. Whoever is not speaking has his microphone off and whoever has a question raises his hand or reports it in the chat and gets the floor. It is a first experiment and, according to Krebbekx, successful with positive reactions afterwards. ’’We will definitely continue it!''
From visit to webinar
With the ‘intelligent lockdown’ in mid-March, Krebbekx sees all the activities of the cooperating high-tech companies going down the drain. But that is short-lived. ,,We are not an innovative business cluster for nothing. Immediately we investigated and set in motion the possibilities for online meetings. The result is that knowledge circles continue online as much as possible.’’ Just like the high-tech safaris for students. Study association Paradoks of the University of Twente is experiencing its first in mid-April: a customized webinar instead of a visit. With, according to Krebbekx, good content presentations from the ICD companies. ’’The way these were transferred to each other was very professional.’’ Still, even here the interactivity lags a bit behind compared to company visits. ,,We still have to come up with something on that.''
High-tech Pub Quiz
Less than ten days later the study associations arrive scintilla (Electrical Engineering) and Arago (Physics) of the University of Twente ‘stopped by’ for an online high-tech safari. Meanwhile, thinking about encouraging interaction, the ICD has put together an online high-tech pub quiz. ’’This way we want to encourage students to actively participate,.’’ It's not the high-tech content, which is fascinating enough, Krebbekx knows from experience. Why will the students participate this time? The grand prize of the pub quiz is a tour in a Tesla. I think we can get them excited about it, the applications are already pouring in.’