BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

"For me there are three important stages. The first is in the 1980s, the second is the Innovation Platform (set up by the Balkenende administration) and the third one is what I am doing now.

"My party, the Christian Democratic Alliance, started in 1980. It was a combination of a Roman Catholic and two Protestant parties. In the 1980s, the CDA was busy with the concept of a responsible society and formulated its basic principles in 1980 - Public Justice, Differentiated Responsibility, Solidarity and Stewardship - but in the 1980s we were thinking about how we could work out that concept: what it meant for different policy sectors, for education, family policy, economic affairs, social security issues and so on. One of the items on the agenda was the issue of technology. In those days we talked about the new world in which we were living.

"We spoke about Alvin Toffler and his book The Third Wave, just to give one example. Or John Naisbitt's book Megatrends. People realized in the 1980s that something was changing so we discussed technology and innovation. We started with a working group, a study committee, and that led to the publication in 1987 of a report with the title: Technology in a Responsible Society. Some of the group had a political background, and there were also people from the universities, from the business sector, and from the unions, and together we addressed the question: how can we have a clearer focus on technology and innovation policymaking, in a responsible society? We discussed what it meant for education, for the business sector, for growth strategies. That was my first experience. I thought it was fascinating to think and talk about technology.

"Our think tank was an independent organization but of course

we were connected with the Christian Democratic Alliance. So it was not only a matter of writing a report, but of organizing conferences about the issue, and it also led to discussions within the CDA. Later, there was a follow-up in election manifestos and so on. I had a great time with a great team of people in the think tank and at that time we were really focusing on the issue of technology. Just underlining the fact that we had such a steering committee said something about the atmosphere within our party: we felt that we had to do more in the sphere of innovation and technology.

"Then in my PhD thesis I also included innovation. At that time we discussed how we could have a better policy regarding innovation issues. Should we have new institutions, innovation centers? Or could we use, for example, the Chambers of Commerce, etc? That was one part of my PhD thesis.

"The second stage seems to me the most important one: the Innovation Platform. I had been a member of parliament since 1998, and I was the party's financial spokesman. I was involved in social security issues as well and then I became the leader of the Christian Democrats

in 2001, after an internal party crisis only eight months before the elections. The political landscape in the Netherlands was changing. We saw the end of the life cycle of the purple coalition, the coalition of the Labor party and two liberal parties. There were new political opportunities, I had to fill the gap at that moment, and we won the elections in May 2002.

"At this point, I should say something about the atmosphere I was confronted with. You could see that there was a willingness to change things. Usually you only become Prime Minister if you have been a minister before that. But for me it was completely new. I became Prime Minister after I had been a member of parliament for only four years, which was remarkable. I did not have any government experience but I had a clearly defined agenda. That was my advantage, as a thinker, as a former staff member of the think tank. When we had a previous crisis in my party in 1994 we lost 20 seats. We set up a working group which produced a report called: Nieuwe wegen, vaste waarden (New pathways, fixed values), meaning that you must have stable values but you have to find new ways of thinking. I was the secretary of that working group. If you have difficulties, always go back to the question: what is the DNA of our party? What are our core values? What do these values mean for renewal of thinking, of your own party? I think it is good to discuss new ideas, because it stops the party from acting as if, when you have such a crisis, it is only a matter of personal differences. You have to find something new, and the best thing you can do is go back to your party's DNA, to your values, and to finding new ways of thinking.