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Holst Centre
Published on 22 January 2018
Netherlands
Noord-Brabant
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About this good practice
Holst Centre was set up in 2005 by imec (Flanders, Belgium) and TNO (The Netherlands) and is supported by local, regional and national governments. It is named after Gilles Holst, a Dutch pioneer in Research and Development and first director of Philips Research. The initiative originally came from Philips. They saw a need to develop flexible electronics and wireless sensor systems. But did not want to develop this technology in splendid isolation.
A key feature of Holst Centre is its partnership model with industry and academia based around shared roadmaps and programs. It is this kind of cross-fertilization that enables Holst Centre to tune its scientific strategy to industrial needs.
Holst Centre's fundamentals are to contribute to answering global societal challenges in healthcare, lifestyle, sustainability and the Internet of Things. This is visible through the motivation of its researchers, its different collaboration models and the choice of its research topics.
Located on High Tech Campus Eindhoven, the centre benefits from, and contributes to, the state-of-the-art on-site facilities. Holst Centre has over 200 employees from some 28 nations and a commitment from over 40 industrial partners.
A key feature of Holst Centre is its partnership model with industry and academia based around shared roadmaps and programs. It is this kind of cross-fertilization that enables Holst Centre to tune its scientific strategy to industrial needs.
Holst Centre's fundamentals are to contribute to answering global societal challenges in healthcare, lifestyle, sustainability and the Internet of Things. This is visible through the motivation of its researchers, its different collaboration models and the choice of its research topics.
Located on High Tech Campus Eindhoven, the centre benefits from, and contributes to, the state-of-the-art on-site facilities. Holst Centre has over 200 employees from some 28 nations and a commitment from over 40 industrial partners.
Resources needed
Expectedly, the public investment needed for the coming years will be between 20-25 million per year, in order to reach the ambition to have a 90 million turnover in 2025 and to work with 100 industrial partners.
Evidence of success
• Eco-system building: the open innovation research programs bring together partners from across value chains to create critical mass and share risks of innovation. Evidence: over 50 companies actively doing research
• Accelerate innovation and going to market to support competitiveness. Evidence: 3 spin off companies in the last three years and a large pilot manufacturing infrastructure, enabling cost sharing of new technology developments and scale up to higher Technology Readiness Levels.
• Accelerate innovation and going to market to support competitiveness. Evidence: 3 spin off companies in the last three years and a large pilot manufacturing infrastructure, enabling cost sharing of new technology developments and scale up to higher Technology Readiness Levels.
Potential for learning or transfer
• Attracting industrial partners: Holst Centre’s programs and business model have proven very successful in attracting industrial partners to specific research roadmaps. A genuine partnership among businesses and academic organizations has been created, managing the sharing of intellectual property, ensuring value for all and measuring performance so that projects that make progress receive the support they need.
• SME’s: dedicated research trajectories are undertaken in collaboration with SMEs, mostly to speed up the technology transfer and industrial uptake of results obtained in shared research. For these collaborations, dedicated partnerships and Intellectual Property agreements are determined.
• Branding: Holst Centre is leveraging on the brands of its founders: Imec and TNO. Additionally, the existing eco-system around Holst Centre has now become an important reason in itself for new industrial partners to join.
• SME’s: dedicated research trajectories are undertaken in collaboration with SMEs, mostly to speed up the technology transfer and industrial uptake of results obtained in shared research. For these collaborations, dedicated partnerships and Intellectual Property agreements are determined.
• Branding: Holst Centre is leveraging on the brands of its founders: Imec and TNO. Additionally, the existing eco-system around Holst Centre has now become an important reason in itself for new industrial partners to join.
Further information
Website
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.
Organisation
TNO and Imec
Netherlands
Noord-Brabant
Contact
Project Manager