Enhancing knowledge flow towards SMEs


Published at 2021-11-02 by Paul Tuinenburg

Last week, the Dutch advisory council for science, technology and innovation published their advice about grabbing opportunities as an entrepreneur with academic knowledge. In a webinar, this advice was explained (both the webinar and report can be found here, in Dutch). There seems to be a paradox since both entrepreneurs in SMEs want to use more (academic) knowledge and universities want to share their knowledge. That's why the advisory council (AWTI), wrote an advice to the Dutch government with 3 tips:

1 Create a way to match scientists and entrepreneurs. A meeting space where they can find each other.

2 Promote knowledge exchange between people, people are key!

3 Stimulate tailored support. Give freedom to universities and their knowledge transfer offices to create this value.

In the webinar you can also spot our director Paul Tuinenburg in a video clip because Impacter isn't just a tool used by academia, the company itself also values scientific knowledge. That's why the employees also work one day a week for the university. This directly links to the second advice of the AWTI, stimulate knowledge exchange between people. Because our employees also have academic colleagues they learn the newest insights they bring to the workfloor. And the other way around, the things they learn with us, can be useful for these research groups. Everybody wins!

Curious to learn more about the advice and/or the webinar. They can both be found here.

Since this is an advice to the Dutch government, both the webinar and text is (unfortunately) only in Dutch.