Tag: esti

More the 200 women and men already joined the Fe+male Tech Heroes movement by High Tech Campus Eindhoven to create more diversity in the tech world. Fe+male Tech Heroes is a platform and network that brings people together, creates awareness in the media and exerts a positive influence on, for example, the diversity policy of companies.

On October 12th the community came together for the Fe+male Tech Heroes Dinner Event. The theme of the evening is: The sky is the limit?
The evening’s speakers have also geared their stories towards the theme. They are Oana van der Togt, Senior Business Developer Manager at the Dutch TNO research organization and member of the Council for Diversity and Inclusion at TNO, and Margot Nijkamp-Diesfeldt our co-founder of ESTI. Both women let the audience know that the sky is definitely not the limit.

Margot Nijkamp-Diesfeldt arrived at the High Tech Campus Eindhoven in 2005 without a technical background. Her husband thought she was perfect for the position of HR and Operations Director at the newly established Holst Centre. The vacancy was briefly shoved under her nose every morning. Nijkamp was determined to finish her MBA studies before she switched jobs. Nonetheless, she decided to send in her CV. Less than five hours later she received a reply: Her profile was a perfect fit. She went for an interview, became enthusiastic and made it through to the assessments. They were tough and she doubted whether the scientific world would suit her, “but I followed my intuition. She got the job and, later as director of SME relations, would remain there until the end of 2011.

EcoSystem Game
During this time, she overcame two life-changing crises. “I had a ‘terminal phobia’ of public speaking,” Nijkamp confesses. “I really can’t explain to you how extreme that was.” Her boss at Holst Centre, Jo De Boeck, said: “But Margot, it’s precisely that that’s not going to help you in your career.” She did some very unique things there, De Boeck told her. He was not the one to talk about that, instead, she was. She reluctantly went in front of an audience, but on two occasions froze so badly that she was not even able to drink water. She had not slept a wink the previous nights either.

A breakthrough came when she met Carolien De Kreij-Goudriaan, who was at Kirkman Company at the time. Nijkamp was invited to speak and came up with a way to interact with her audience. She designed a game. “My passion is writing. I outlined some roles and tasks and had people play the game first. Then I explained what they had done.” Her game caught on, people got excited and of the 40, 20 of them asked her to come do the same thing at their organization as well. It was the start of what is now the EcoSystem Game.

“I had written those roles in a really fun way. With a good dose of humor. That allowed people to really experience what it is like to work on innovation at the Holst Centre. At the same time, I had been able to interact with a lot of people. That worked. Now you can put me in front of a room of 100 people and I’ll read that room in 3 minutes.”

Two big dreams
During Fe+male Tech Heroes, Nijkamp also manages to captivate her audience with her own personal story. There’s an even more pronounced hush in the room as she talks about her second crisis to the audience. It was one she had not seen coming, she states. At the end of 2010, she was told she could expect to live only another four to six months. ” That’s a real crisis,” she recalls. That crisis led her to think about what she still wanted to do. She had two big dreams back then. “I wanted to create a start-up with zero euros and become a published author. So I started writing like crazy on my first novel.”

Under the pseudonym Emma Flogard – a Scandinavian surname that refers to keeping a watchful eye on your flow – All I’ve Got was published. Through the Holst Centre, she set up the Red BlueJay Foundation as a spin-off. What she had learned up to that point was that people are more than what they put on their CVs. In her work with the Holst Centre and others, she developed a work climate with room for the people factor, one with strong feminine cultural overtones, as Nijkamp puts it. “If that creates common ground, it creates the space to work together on innovation.” It forms the basis of the game that she developed and continued on with within Red BlueJay.

“People told me I was crazy for wanting to start a business for myself while undergoing all those grueling treatments. But for me, there was no other time to do that, it was really now or never.” In the end, the diagnosis turned out to be partly wrong and Nijkamp still has her feet firmly on the ground. She wrote another poetry (Stripe code of lashes) and her book Samenscholing Geboden appeared under her own name. “It was published even before corona turned up,” Nijkamp is quick to add.

From day to day
Her foundation also continued to evolve into ESTI, EcoSystem Thinking Institute, where she works with her business partner Rick Wielens and team for clients such as the Dutch Ministry of Defence, Unilever, the Province of Gelderland and the University of Amsterdam. Things are going well for her. Even though she is in pain 24 hours a day, no one notices it about her. She is hypermobile and has Hemochromatosis, an iron overload disease. “Physically, I can’t do much. That makes me mentally inexhaustible.”

“If you had told me 35 years ago, when I was working as a secretary at Stork, that I would now be the director of a foundation and writing books, I would have laughed at you outright. I don’t have a dream of where it will all eventually lead, I live from day to day. However, each time I make a decision with my team as to whether what we do at ESTI has any social impact. Every cent we earn goes back into the foundation.”

Thank you Corine Spaans for this great recap of the Fe+male Tech Heroes Dinner Event. You can read the complete story at Innovation Origins.

In a world of increasing uncertainties, learning how to work and rely on human centric ecosystems is key. 

The higher the ambiguity, the more it important it is to connect on a human level and to develop trust as a basis for collaboration. We need to transition from the dominant zero-sum-game-mindset to a mindset that reflects the reality of interdependency. 

Rick Wielens introduces the why of human centric ecosystems in this short clip from our Human Centric Innovation Conference. 

Ecosystem Thinking Institute: ‘The clock-speed of innovation keeps ticking faster’

The concept of innovation has been widely discussed these days in all areas and markets. However, are companies really nourishing a breeding ground for innovative solutions? Are they truly aware of the market timing and opportunities for their novel products? How to work (and think) like an ecosystem from a demand-driven innovation perspective? Margot Nijkamp, the Ecosystem Thinking Institute’s co-founder, has the answers to all these questions and more. She talks to us about the Institute’s development and goals, their strategies during the fastidious 2020 crisis, and gives us insights into how important it is for companies to keep an eye on the outside world.

It is safe to say that Margot Nijkamp knows a thing or two about innovation. For instance, as a member of the startup team of Packard Bell EMEA, she helped bring the very first home computers to the world. In her fourth startup, she was the first non-Philips resident on the High Tech Campus when the Ministry of Economic Affairs designed a new applied knowledge institute: Holst Centre. Margot in her role of HR & Operations Director was the very first person to make quarters on HTC. “It was very challenging, and I’m very proud to have been part of it,” she describes.

The search for demand-driven innovation
After a life-changing experience with a severe health condition, Margot decided to pursue her dreams – one of them being to create a startup with zero Euros. She left Holst Centre and spun out with the Red Bluejay Foundation, which began its efforts in January 2011 as a place to work with young talents on cultural elements for innovation.

As the High Tech Campus was very much interested in the project, it evolved into the Open Innovation Academy and further: “Eventually, we discussed that if we wanted to make big demand-driven innovation trajectories, we had to make sure that we promoted challenges for big corporations, for the public sector, and other fields,” Margot explains. Ultimately, this all progressed towards what now is the EcoSystem Thinking Institute, an organization that helps companies rethink their strategies through demand-driven innovation from a shared-risk, shared-result perspective.

The EcoSystem Thinking Institute
ESTI is a non-profit foundation described by Margot as the new entity where all the programs, challenges, consultancy, training, and implementation efforts have come together. ESTI works towards bringing ecosystem thinking perspectives on the process steps companies need to take to achieve successful innovation with the outside world. The main idea is to help them think of how they can do demand-driven innovation. “If you do technology push, you don’t know if someone is out there waiting for your product or service. So it’s much better to start at the demand side, making sure that there is a real problem that must be addressed,” Margot claims.

The Retrofit Insulation Challenge, created for about 25 Dutch housing corporations, is an interesting example of that. Margot says that the insulation packages commonly used were about 30 centimeters thick resulting in huge integral project costs. However, by exploring and thinking together, the companies managed to find a new insulation solution, a material derived from the aviation industry, which measured a tiny fraction of that. The outcome: housing corporations did not need to change the window sills or the door frames, resulting in a much lower total cost of ownership and thus rent. “This is a compelling example of how this ecosystem thinking brings you new perspectives from cross-overs,” she reflects.

The clock-speed of innovation requires…asking the right questions
ESTI’s philosophy underlines the importance of having a good problem or a good question. Something that might be absent in organizations that lack established innovation departments. “Very often, you see organizations looking for a solution – an 8×8 vehicle to overcome rugged terrain. They don’t say: ‘We need to transport something or someone from A to B.’ By not describing the effects that they want to reach, but the solution, they remove every kind of thinking on innovation,” Margot describes. Helping guide this thinking process and taking the right steps to absorb new knowledge: that is the role of ESTI. 
Meanwhile, the clock-speed of innovation, as Margot defines, keeps going faster. According to her, individualistic thinking, or a closed innovation culture, can be true only for organizations who think they can afford to keep it that way. Nevertheless, in the real world, if companies do not look outside, they miss the timing.

The team
Margot has worked together with Rick Wielens, ESTI’s second co-founder, since 2011. As she explains, “Rick is the technology-driven and process-driven person. And I look at the human factor, the cultural elements, bringing the right diversity and mindsets. So we’re very much complementary in that aspect.”
In total, ESTI’s team has around 15 people, seven of those involved in the projects regularly. Margot describes it as being “very diverse,” with people of all age groups, religions, and distinct backgrounds. “We have people coming from the corporate world; others who’ve done very in-depth landscaping into technology; we have fantastic program managers to guide the challenges. I am currently working mostly towards the public sector, education, and labor markets,” Margot declares.

Read the full blog at High Tech Campus Eindhoven. Written by Letícia Batista

What does Ecosystem Thinking mean for Sales & Buying?

Working together with the outside world substantially changes the rules of engagement – also in Sales & Buying. Let Margot Nijkamp take you through the mindset shifts that will be needed for the future.

#diversity #procurement #ecosystemthinking #openinnovation #innovationmindsets

Is your role in innovation still fit for purpose? Which options do you have for change? Answer these questions with the exceptional guidance of Dr. Graham Cross.

Enjoy!

#ecosystembuilding #knowledgeabsorption #knowledgemanagement #openinnovation

The new CHRO – the Chief Human Relations Orchestrator

Working in open innovation, tapping into your ecosystem, demands a more feminine organization culture. Margot Nijkamp explains how to grow HR from a business partner into the innovation partner.

#diversity #talentmanagement #human factor #openinnovation #organizationculture