ABN AMRO today has officially opened the Econic innovation hub in Eindhoven. Fintechs and the bank’s employees will meet each other here in to develop and test their ideas together. Day-to-day management of the hub will be carried out by external innovation experts. Econic will start out by developing seven innovative startups and four participating fintechs.
“Econic will work with a proven innovation process, which the experts leading the hub have used previously for High Tech XL and various Dutch top 100 companies”, a spokesman for ABN AMRO says. “The process, which will now be applied to fintechs for the first time, involves continuous monitoring of the innovation teams, workshops and master classes to achieve a ready-to-market proposition in six months.” Besides fintechs, other companies with new ideas for business banking are also welcome at Econic.
Joop Wijn, member of the ABN AMRO Managing Board: “Econic brings together the worlds of fintechs and the bank. Promising ideas will be tested continuously against the bank’s day-to-day reality. This makes the innovation process swift and robust.” Participating companies will be housed in a separate space in the ABN AMRO regional office on Vestdijk in Eindhoven.
Staf Depla, alderman for the city of Eindhoven: “Using innovation and new technologies to create new products and services has always been at the heart of the dynamic environment, employment and economic activity in our region. Econic fits perfectly in this picture.”
Anique Soetermeer-Gabriëls, one of the innovation experts at Econic: “Collaboration between corporates on the one hand and start-ups and scale-ups on the other is essential in order to make a difference in the international knowledge economy. This initiative is an outstanding way of making this happen.”
Econic is based in Eindhoven. ABN AMRO and the city of Eindhoven, Philips, ASML, EY&HVG, BOM, NTS Group, Brainport and the Eindhoven High Tech Campus are partners to the Eindhoven Startup Alliance. This alliance supports start-up accelerator HighTechXL in setting up new companies.