On 7 December 2017, the University of Twente was voted the most entrepreneurial university in the Netherlands for the third time. Moreover, the UT is the university with the greatest impact in the Netherlands. This was clear from the sum of results from four categories: How entrepreneurial the university is, how strong its collaboration with the practical field is, how well it communicates via public media, and how involved in public debate the university is. Across all the categories, the University of Twente achieved the highest score, and thus – measured per researcher – the university has the greatest impact in the Netherlands.
This is the fourth time that the biennial Impact Ranking has been published. This ranking measures in numbers which university has the highest societal impact. Societal impact is a collective term that is measured on the basis of 20 variables on how universities create value for society. ScienceWorks, based in The Hague, put these rankings together using public resources and information provided by universities.
The UT: the most entrepreneurial university
In the Impact Ranking, the universities were assessed on four different roles: the entrepreneurial university (University of Twente), the collaborative university (Wageningen University), the communicative university (Tilburg University) and the new category: the social university (University of Amsterdam). When the scores per category are added together, the University of Twente (UT) comes out on top overall. Once again, the UT has bagged two awards, one as the most entrepreneurial university and one as the best university overall in the Impact Ranking.
35 years of experience and results
Victor van der Chijs, the University of Twente’s President of the Executive Board, is proud of the result once more. “It’s no surprise that our collaboration with the Twente region, the province of Overijssel, the municipality of Enschede, Saxion, and the business world has strengthened our entrepreneurial climate and has helped create a cutting-edge, European top technology region. We’ve got 35 years of experience and results in that field. However, we have to stay on the ball when it comes to this collaboration. Other regions are on our heels, so our goal is to keep this momentum going and stay ahead of the pack. This award is a lovely reminder that our work is paying off.”
The cherry on top
Kees Eijkel, Director of Strategic Business Development, and, up until last year, responsible for the Kennispark Twente, thinks this is a brilliant result. “Receiving this recognition is the cherry on top of the cake that has been years of building up the ecosystem for startups and spin-offs.”
Twente at full steam ahead
His successor, Jaap Beernink, Director of Novel-T, is delighted that the title is staying with the UT. “Novel-T pools all the resources for the UT, from those that support technology transfer and entrepreneurship, to those that promote links with regional industry. The UT invests more in this than any other university. Consider, for example, the business support for entrepreneurial researchers and students, the provision and facilitation of financing, and providing specific facilities. Twente is going at full steam ahead as a technological top region, driven by the most entrepreneurial university of the Netherlands!”
More information
This year marks the fourth time that the Impact Ranking has been published. The last ranking was from 2015. Visit the ScienceWorks website for more information about the ranking.
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