Innovator in the Spotlight

Towards a more inclusive society to raise awareness of basic skills gaps

In the Netherlands, 2.5 million people struggle daily with reading, writing, math, and digital skills, also called basic skills. These deficiencies make it difficult for them to fully participate in society, such as reading and understanding a letter or buying a train ticket, leading to various personal and societal problems.

The first pilot of the Business Model Innovation in an Exponential World course for the NEON project

Eindhoven Engine Academy has developed a methodology, approach and supporting documents and has made these available via its website in order to organize an agile, fully autonomous innovation trajectory which is ideally suited to dealing with wicked problems. While it follows the format of a course, this is a learning-by-doing experience and is titled Business Model Innovation in an Exponential World. This course has been developed with the financial support of PATO*.

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The course is available for free use by all but, given the innovative nature of the approach and the specific focus, it will clearly be easier and will yield more impact if it is mentored/coached. This mentoring process can be organized virtually or face to face and the Academy can provide this support on a fee basis. At the same time, Eindhoven Engine wants to offer this opportunity to its own projects on a voluntary basis. For the Engine projects, this offer includes a few personal coaching sessions with the team leader in order to make sure that whatever comes up in the seminars is anchored in the project management. The first brave participants were part of the NEON project.

The purpose, structure and approach of the course are on our website, but we want to share some feedback from participants on how they experienced the series.


I enjoyed the Eindhoven Engine seminar as it provided a structure to reassess our project through a different lens, which is not the immediate lens of our own research. In that regard, it allowed me to see other aspects of my research that I had not directly thought of. It also highlighted the practical applicability of our project and how we can translate our research into an increased contribution to society. I highly recommend it for multidisciplinary projects as it allows one to align different viewpoints and to subsequently create added value for the entire project.

Researcher NEON

In a sense, the seminar series shows us how to ‘extend the cake’ by aligning our research rather than how we ‘share a cake’ through the lens of our individual research.

Researcher NEON

*PATO: stichting Post-Academisch Technisch Onderwijs