Columns

It’s business stupid

What is it with the Dutch that they have such difficulty grabbing business opportunities in a changing world? We have the brains, we have the money and the opportunities are plenty. Still, during the last 40 years hardly any company of substantial size has emerged next to the old industry in the AEX. Oil, food, materials and financial services dominate the landscape. We have left the environmental challenges to environmentalists, rather then building innovative businesses in solar or wind energy to help face them. We have exported our knowledge on agriculture around the world, and now that we can more intelligently engineer crops we let the opportunity pass due to invalid arguments around GMOs. Now that “kweekersrecht” is being substituted by patent law we complain instead of adapt.

Team & Transform

Technological managers are governing the Life Sciences, ICT and quite some other industries. When these managers were students, they were the smartest ones of their class, excellent in science, learning foreign languages, they don’t need anybody else. I know it so well, well, because I’m one of those. During scientific conferences we are discussing bluntly and openly with colleagues. We are so used to this attitude that we don’t go easy in accepting knowledge from experts outside our disciplines. The CEO of an organic chemical synthesis company – an expert in chiral chemistry - told me that in his whole career it has never happened that a pharmaceutical researcher from another discipline would ask him for an opinion in his particular field of expertise.

Growing Up

The Spinoza centre for Neuro-imaging, a joint investment in high-quality equipment on the part of a number of research institutions and the Municipality of Amsterdam, was launched at the official residence of the Mayor of Amsterdam on 18 December 2007. It so happens that life sciences were also discussed at the official residence of Mayor Cohen precisely four years prior to this festive occasion, on 18 December 2003. The question then concerned whether or not knowledge institutions, the business community and the municipality could work together to strengthen the life sciences sector in Amsterdam, and if so how. Fortunately, the answer to this question was affirmative and the launch of the Spinoza centre is a clear indication that the co-operation has proved successful.

Let’s make it happen, here in Amsterdam!

Amsterdam houses two universities and numerous dedicated research institutes. The healthcare related institutions have a long tradition in excellence in research in areas such as oncology, neurosciences, autoimmunity and cardiovascular and infectious diseases. In the field of Life Sciences, one can state: ‘Amsterdam has it all’.