Transformation at the Eindhoven Engine Academy

Transforming mindsets in order to empower people and organizations to embrace radical innovation and create a more sustainable world and more humane societies: this is what transformation means at Eindhoven Engine.

The Eindhoven Engine Academy supports this transformation towards innovations regarding the process of innovation itself. It does this in various ways, with its main task being to support the projects and activities of Eindhoven Engine.

Not a traditional academy

The Academy should not be understood as a traditional academy offering seminars and courses to either enrolled participants or the wider public. The Academy is an accelerator, a challenger and a connector of the projects hosted by the Eindhoven Engine. It starts from the challenge at hand, not from the solution. The task (and the desired impact) is the unit of analysis, not the problem-solution itself. This contributes to the richest possible understanding of how solutions might appear. The Academy wants to create and support a learning community in Eindhoven Engine which facilitates innovation acceleration and technology being brought to market. The Academy’s crucial focus is on business model innovation and not so much on technological innovation nor on creating start-ups. It supports technology which is purposeful and impactful (e.g. supports the SDGs or improves quality of life for people).

In the context described above, we work within an innovation ecosystem (Eindhoven Engine) in order to innovate the manner of innovation itself, with a focus on agility and acceleration. The Academy bases its interventions on the following concepts:

• Open innovation
• Co-creation
• Co-location (with virtual extension)
• Activation of the ecosystem’s collective intelligence
• Design thinking and agile innovation
• Systems thinking
• Dealing meaningfully with wicked problems

The Eindhoven Engine Academy supports the projects in the ecosystem and could play a wider role in the Brainport region. It has no ambition to become an institute independent of Eindhoven Engine. Indeed, the Academy can be considered the engine room of Eindhoven Engine.