This Tuesday afternoon, the Evoluon venue was filled with some 300 young professionals from high-tech companies like ASML, NXP, VDL, Vanderlande, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Bosch. They were invited to the event by their higher management to get to know each other a bit better. After all, “together we can do more than the sum of ourselves as individuals,” as Rick Jongen, the introducing speaker, said.
All this happened in Eindhoven’s very own spaceship, the Evoluon. At least, that’s what ‘tenant’ Koert van Mensvoort wanted us to believe when he showed his audience that this place would be the ideal location for aliens to set foot on Earth. “Because when you start searching for the biggest block of light on the planet, where do you think it is? Mexico City, Tokyo, New York? No, it’s closer than you think. It’s the area between Amsterdam, Brussels, and Cologne. Yes, we are right in the middle. So if the aliens would ever land on this planet, it might as well be here.”
Richard van Hooijdonk’s keynote was a combination of praise for a future we can hardly envision, a warning not to let everything get out of control, and a deep concern about the bankruptcy of our educational system. “Why would we still educate our children for jobs that won’t exist when they have stopped learning?” Apart from our schools, the companies all the young professionals in his audience were working for didn’t get much of Van Hooijdonk’s respect either. He gently advised his crowd “to immediately kick out all the old white men who are only obstructing these companies because they block progress with their focus on change-delaying processes.”
Networking games
Expectations were higher than just a friendly meeting, no matter how cozy this already was. After being entertained by Koert van Mensvoort and Richard van Hooijdonk’s forward-looking keynotes, it was time to get to work. By assigning every participant to a particular table, dozens of cross-company teams could be formed. Their task: based on the inspiration offered by the keynotes, “play the networking games that ensure you get to know each other and start innovating.”
“That’s our goal for today”, Jongen added. “To connect and inspire professionals from the Dutch high-tech industry, to broaden horizons, support a more attractive working environment, and enable cross-company innovation. So now it’s up to you: talk to each other, find out what other people are doing, find out if they have solutions to the problems you are facing, and get that cross-company innovation going.”
It turned out to be a fruitful afternoon. Koert van Mensvoort’s aliens didn’t appear at the party after all, but the extraterrestrial ideas were abundant. A shared vision of technology turned out to be a great way to build the future, especially if it is cross-company. Again, in Van Mensvoort’s words: “Technology is our next nature. Is it possible to envision a future for humanity without looking at the future of technology?”
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