Alumni stories

Bart, Innovation Broker at NATO

You might not expect an NW&I alumnus to work in the military field. Especially when you know how much I focused on the drug development pipeline, compensation systems and medical devices during my Bachelor’s. Or how I wrote my Bachelor's thesis about the company 23and Me (recently in the news due to a major data breach), and how I continued focusing on health care systems and compensation during my Master’s in Innovation Sciences. So how did I end up at NATO eight years after graduation?

If you’ve ever read Mazzucato, then you know there’s a clear relationship between military development and innovation. Military actors are the definition of mission-oriented workers, and their efforts have often resulted in spillovers to civilian markets. Today, there’s a lot of attention paid to spin-in and dual-use development of innovation. I have a hand in that as an Innovation Broker at NATO. One of my jobs is to spot opportunities for the alliance in the area of civilian innovations. For example: what can we digitise, and how can we bring traditional military domains together?

Before technology can be used in the military domain, there’s always an innovation problem that needs to be solved. That’s because the military use environment is dramatically different from a civilian use environment. Security, standardisation and efficiency of effort all play completely different roles than in the free market, where end users have a prominent role in refining innovations. Recognising those differences while still applying lessons from the theory and practice of innovation is a big challenge. And it’s one that is well-suited to the competencies you learn while studying to become an innovation scientist.

But how did all of that bring me into contact with NATO? Well, I’ll tell you. After graduation, I spent a few years hanging around the Copernicus Institute as a junior lecturer looking for a PhD position. Via my students, I came into contact with a Colonel in the Dutch Army, and that piqued my curiosity. He soon offered me a job as an innovation strategist. For the next four years, I worked for the Army developing project-level innovative solutions for the land forces in a variety of domains, from the energy transition to military health care.

But after a visit to Allied Command Transformation, the NATO command that works on technological developments within the alliance, I decided to switch to that exciting international environment. Now I work at the NATO Innovation Hub, where I help member states set up and professionalise their own innovation units. We also combine knowledge, experiences and portfolios in an alliance-wide network. Innovation is everywhere, but for a military alliance combining all of those efforts is crucial in order to truly stimulate innovation.

My career path is an example of how multi-faceted the Bachelor’s programme Natuurwetenschap en Innovatiemanagement and the Master’s in Innovation Sciences can be. You learn how to recognise the dynamics of innovation, and how to think about innovation at the systemic level. And the best thing is how that skill set doesn’t belong to one single sector or branch, which gives you as an alumnus a lot of freedom. Freedom that’s yours for the taking, and that presents opportunities to follow your passions.

If you’d like to know more about what it’s like to work for an international military organisation, please don’t hesitate to send me a message on LinkedIn!

Bart Hollants, MSc.
Innovation Sciences alumnus

Marjolein, Senior Innovation Consultant at Rijkswaterstaat

I, Marjolein van der Klauw, earned my degree in Science & Innovation Management at Utrecht University in 2009. The entire job market lay at my feet, and after working in a variety of positions at several different companies, I went to work at Rijkswaterstaat in 2016. I started there as a Sustainable Purchasing Consultant, but two years ago I was promoted to Senior Innovation Consultant. My main focus is on innovation processes in the area of climate-neutral and circular infrastructure.

A wide range of duties
But that’s not the only thing I work on. I also take care of process optimisations and policy formation. That variety is what makes my position so much fun. Right now, for example, I’m working with a team to draw up a strategy involving climate-neutral and circular infrastructure for our dredging projects. My objective is to encourage ships to use cleaner engines and fuels for their operations, with a focus on coastline and shipping channel maintenance. 

Focus on collaboration
But I definitely don’t do that on my own. I also collaborate with a wide range of colleagues, including technical specialists, information managers and asset managers. Together we make adjustments to technical frameworks and methods, or encourage and facilitate the re-use of materials like traffic barriers, steel piling curtains and guard rails. That might sound simple, but it takes a lot of time and effort to organise it effectively. I also meet regularly with other innovation colleagues to think of ways to implement promising innovations faster, or even to embed them in the organisation, in accordance with the ‘holy trinity’: innovate, standardise, and produce. That’s a lot of fun, because it brings me into contact with completely different issues like Smart Mobility, AI and Digital Twins.        

Working on the future
I enjoy the wide range of tasks and the team spirit, but the part I love most about my work is how I’m contributing to a more sustainable infrastructure. Market partners can design and build anything we in the government could want. But first we have to ask the right questions, and then facilitate them in their work. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the past 7 years. And believe me: there’s plenty of work to do in the years ahead. Because it’s not easy to bring together all of the internal and external stakeholders, like the market parties and the other clients. But that’s precisely what makes my work so fascinating.