Orchestrating Innovation: challenges that demand a collaborative approach

Working together for innovation is always a challenge. After all, it’s likely that the various participants will have conflicting interests. And if they don’t all “sing from the same song sheet”, then their collaboration can’t succeed.

Confidence – for the long haul

When collaboration will succeed is if the participants serve a common interest. The key is knowing and acknowledge one another’s interests. But that’s easier said than done, especially when the field concerned is a highly complex one, for example the energy transition. It’s important to clarify who the participating parties are and what they can or must do for one another. They need to be confident that they will come out stronger, and they must also be in it for the long haul.

We’ll help you organise things

The success of a collaborative venture depends to a large extent on who can “orchestrate” it effectively. For successful collaboration, you need to have a neutral party, one that takes stock of the interests and motives of all the participants. And that then makes sure those involved seek out a common goal that everyone can agree on. A kind of orchestrator that deals with issues such as the following:

• Which parties should we bring in, and at what point?
• What are the interests and aims of each party?
• With what shared ambition do we motivate the most relevant parties?
• What role are they willing and able to play in this innovation?
• How do we get the participants to make an active contribution?

A positive contribution to society

TNO has a lot of experience in orchestrating public-private partnerships. We seek out solutions together to challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, health, sustainability, digitalisation, quality of life, and safety. The aim is to bring about innovations that make a positive contribution to society and that meet the challenges we face.

A special learning programme

Our experience and expertise about innovation processes has produced an approach that we call Orchestrating Innovation. We can relieve you of the burden!

And if you yourself want to grow, then that’s possible too. In collaboration with the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship (ECE) and the Rotterdam School of Management, we provide a special learning programme: “Orchestrating Innovation in public-private ecosystems”.