The Netherlands is one of the twenty largest economies in the world and is a leading global knowledge economy. Holland has a longstanding history of invention, moving around the oceans of the world, trading with other countries. In times of global, social and economic challenges, the Dutch find ways of how innovation and entrepreneurship can continue to grow. Rest
NWO [Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research] makes a relevant contribution to the Dutch knowledge economy and to helping solve scientific problems faced by companies as well to tackling societal issues such as energy and health. The effectiveness of this approach can be seen in the huge success of the Industrial Partnership Programmes, for example. In these programmes challenging problems from the private sector are linked to creative scientific solutions, in which the company and NWO jointly fund the research.
NWO is exploiting the emerging idea of ‘open innovation’ to foster greater cooperation with companies. The NWO Domain Science has an extensive network of experts in a wide range of physics subjects. Those experts already collaborate with companies or would like to do so. Likewise NWO maintains close contacts with companies who involve NWO in their research for a longer period of time. Rest