This Sunday column normally deals with the (mostly technological) solutions to the problems of our time for 51 times a year. With columnists, Maarten Steinbuch, Mary Fiers, Carlo van de Weijer, Lucien Engelen and Tessie Hartjes, E52 tries to find out what the future will look like. In Week 52, E52 looks over their shoulders to its own future: how do we make sure that we can keep on creating the stories that make up for the sneak preview of the future that you are used to getting from us?
A few more hours and the year is over. As always around this time it is the period of looking back, recollecting memories and making lists. But don’t be fooled: all this nostalgia has much less to do with a human urge for the past than with the drive for clicks in the publishing media. That used to be the case when we only had newspapers, radio, and TV, and since we’re in the age of digital dominance that has only worsened.
Yes, history can teach us a lot. But let us not confuse those lessons with the clickbait lists with the so-called ‘highlights’ of the past year. The biggest, the tastiest, the best, the deadest, the most bizarre, the most controversial… they all passed by, one even more clickable than the other. But not on E52. We prefer to look ahead: not focused on what happened yesterday, but what is relevant tomorrow.
On E52, we place our daily focus on all those people and organizations that are filling in our world of tomorrow. Innovations, the business that underlies them and the way all this is embedded in the local environment: that is what we want to cover. On average four stories a day, in two languages, in text and (more and more often) video, with occasional side steps to newspapers, books, and events. All of that with only one goal: to help sharpen the image of our future.
We do this not only because those stories give us a lot of satisfaction (that’s how it all started) or because of the appreciation we get from our followers for it (thank you!), but most of all because it is necessary. Stories are needed to understand the world better, to gain a little confidence in the future and to put the people and companies who can contribute to this in the spotlights. We will continue to do so in 2018 as well. Or rather: we want to expand these activities even further. Making more stories, making them better as well.
To make tomorrow good, Maarten Steinbuch not only needs to found his 1,000 employees company in medical robotics, Carlo van de Weijer not only needs to solve his autonomous driving dilemma, Tessie Hartjes not only needs to have her 1,000 LightYears on the road, Lucien Engelen not only needs to see his digital hospital in action, and Mary Fiers not only needs to green our world. Their performance – and that of all others in our innovative ecosystem – must be recorded and, above all, explained to all people who may have an interest in it.
In short, the story of innovation must be told. Permanently, consistently, structurally. Not with our raison d’être as a goal, but as a tool for all those organizations that really shape our future. And through them for society as a whole. Thanks to our clients and partners (to name the most important ones: High Tech Campus Eindhoven, Brainport Development, Eindhoven365, Dutch Design Foundation, ASML, municipality of Eindhoven) we can keep doing what we currently do.
The last three years have been a good start for E52, but, as said, we don’t like to look back. Just like all those startups we love to report about, we want to grow. And for that, additional business is needed. So don’t be surprised if we are knocking on your door one of these days. If you are already convinced of the importance of our activities, do not hesitate and contact us. Just to ensure that tomorrow will be good.
