BUS604: Innovation and Sustainability

"In 2002 it was the end of the purple coalition. We were also confronted with the terrible killing of Pim Fortuyn. I knew him very well. Suddenly everything was changing. I won the elections and suddenly I was Prime Minister. But there was a need to have a new kind of stability because it was a risky time. People were not happy. They were saying, 'I have to wait too long for my operation. My parents cannot get the right care facilities. Sometimes we don't have teachers in the classrooms'. That was the moment we said, 'We have to change things'. The first thing we said is we really have to carry out a programme of reform. We have to change our social security system and pre-pension facilities. We have to change the Dutch health system. That was one agenda - the reform agenda.

"The second point I made was that it was important to talk about values in society. It was necessary to underline the essential component of values in society. It was necessary to talk about how people behaved towards each other. What about showing respect for others? What about dignity in society? Can children grow up in a safe world?

"Respect was the key word. Later on Dutch organizations started the initiative 'Day of Respect'. I thought it was necessary to talk about it. I was criticized when I did so - 'Ah, he wants to go back to the 1950s, it's an old-fashioned approach'. But outside the square kilometer of The Hague people understood what I meant. They said indeed we must have a safer society, a society with a heart. So that was the second component.

"The third one had to be financial policy. We had to make a lot of savings.

"The fourth dimension was innovation.

"My second coalition consisted of my party, the Christian Democrats, the more conservative liberal party, the VVD, and D66, the social liberal party. Together we were convinced we had to do much more in the sphere of innovation. Why? Because the Netherlands was falling behind. In 2002 we were confronted with financial and economic difficulties, an economic slowdown, and we were falling behind the rest of Europe. We were sliding down the global competitive index of the World Economic Forum. We decided we should do much more to strengthen our position and the structure of our economy. We were also convinced that the world was changing.

"We could see there were a lot of new developments so we said we had to focus more on the issue of innovation and new technologies. Usually you invite a committee to give some advice to the government. We said no, we should do this another way. Let's have a completely new organization, which we called the Innovation Platform. Representing the government we had the Prime Minister, the Minister of Education, and the Minister of Economic Affairs. The second group consisted of high-ranking officials from the business sector, for example the CEO of Philips, but also people from the SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises).

"The third group came from the universities. The idea was, let's learn from each other. This was not a traditional organization. We would not meet in The Hague. We would go to universities or business. And we had to start from scratch. So there was not, in the beginning, a clearly developed agenda. We said, let's work together and analyze what the position of the Netherlands is. We discovered that we had to do many, many things.

"I will give some concrete examples just to clarify what happened. In the beginning it was a bit difficult to work out what exactly the agenda was, what we should develop in the way of new ideas. Gradually we discovered that we had some difficulties in the Netherlands. For example, we discovered that a lot of SMEs were not taking advantage of the knowledge of universities and knowledge centers. So we said we must develop an instrument that stimulates SMEs to benefit from the knowledge centers. We started an initiative called innovation vouchers. We gave financial support to SMEs, worth 7,500 euros, and they could use it to tap into those knowledge centers.

"The second thing we discovered was that for a lot of SMEs it was very expensive to do research. So we said we must have cooperation around research activities in the pre-competitive phase. We launched what we called Innovatie Prestatie contracts, innovation agreements, to facilitate pre-competitive research and development activities.

"The third example was that we discovered that research in the public and private sectors were separate worlds. We ought to have exchanges of researchers. 

We also said it is rather remarkable, we have a lot of gas revenues in the Netherlands so we should also spend more on Research and Development (R&D) activities. That was more of a macro issue. We decided to organize a big event so that people could see things were changing, to illustrate what we were doing with the Innovation Platform, and also what we could learn from each other. So we had an Innovation Congress. I think there was room for 2,000 people and in two weeks it was fully subscribed. So the first phase of the Innovation Platform was analyzing what the position of the Netherlands was, what could be improved, what actions we should take, and we organized many activities and events. That was one.

"The second point was that because of the fact that we had an Innovation Platform on a national scale it also generated enthusiasm at a regional level. When I was in Eindhoven or Utrecht or elsewhere you could see that regional innovation platforms were being developed. That was good and important. I am talking in an enthusiastic way about it, but we were also criticised, as it always goes, by members of parliament and the media.

"But we just carried on and the funny thing is, there was a professor, Ronald Plasterk, who was on television from time to time criticising the Innovation Platform. Why do I mention him? We had elections again in 2006 which led to a new government in 2007: a coalition between my party, the Christian Democrats, the PvdA (the Labour Party), and a small Christian party, the Christian Union. The question was: should we continue the work of the Innovation Platform? There was no discussion about it: yes, we should.

"Despite the fact that he had been very critical previously, Mr Plasterk became the first Vice Chair of the second Innovation Platform, and he played a fantastic role. The second Platform was again composed of people from the government - the Prime Minister, the Minister of Education, the Minister of Economic Affairs - people from the business sector, and also from NGOs and the university world.

Then something remarkable happened. We said it's not only a matter of technology: we also should work in the sphere of social innovation. We formed a group that devoted itself to issues of social innovation.

"We also decided we should be more specific about innovation in the sphere of health. So there was a separate platform for innovation and health. We thought we should have more head offices of big companies in the Netherlands. How could we make the Netherlands more attractive to them? We also discovered that a lot of people from other countries had difficulty entering the Netherlands. When you wanted to attract knowledge workers, it was difficult.

"So we said we had to speed up the entry procedures for them. We also said innovation is a matter of imagination. Hans de Boer, who is now leader of VNO NCW, the employers' association, was busy with the idea of creating a tulip-shaped island in the North Sea.

"Everyone said it was a crazy idea but the idea was that we were strong in offshore developments, so when he came up with this idea to have a tulip-shaped island in the North Sea, it attracted publicity all around the world. So you could see that the second Innovation Platform was attracting attention and we were discovering how we could change things.

"In the second Innovation Platform we said we had to define six key areas in which we could be strong in the Netherlands. How could we bring different groups together, logistics, for example, or agriculture? We were strong in those sectors. So the idea of defining those key sectors was to make the Netherlands stronger by focusing more on them.

"That is the general story of the Innovation Platform. I was happy that we took the initiative to do it. It resulted in a lot of actions, more than 180 of them. And it generated new ideas. It also had consequences for policymaking, for example financial ones. There was the issue of how to spend more money on research and development.

We wanted to spend a part of our gas revenues on research and development, just to give one example. It had to do with the universities' financial streams. We had responsibility as a government, so we wanted to manage the follow-up of the ideas of the Innovation Platform.

"But universities and business were involved too. Today, for example, we say if you want to be successful in the sphere of innovation, you must have triple helix constructions, meaning you must have cooperation between government, knowledge centers, and business. In fact, the Innovation Platform was a triple helix avant la lettre. "I ceased being Prime Minister in October 2010 and we had a new government under Mark Rutte. Unfortunately they did not continue the Innovation Platform. My idea was to have a new platform, not on general ideas because that had existed for several years. Our idea was to have another platform more about execution and implementation. But the government decided not to have a new Innovation Platform.

"They said, instead of the key areas, they would start with a topsector approach. This meant that the government defined 10 top sectors which play a key role in the Dutch economy. It was a matter of combining forces, generating new ideas, and public support of private initiatives. In fact, that was in line with our recommendations. I myself continued to be active in the sphere of innovation. Since then the Netherlands has reached the top five in the Global Competitive Index. So you can see the influence of the Innovation Platform. It was a contributor to a greater awareness regarding innovation and technology.