As the EU doubles down on competitiveness, leading Dutch applied science organisation TNO scrambles to prove its worth
Marcel de Heide, TNO’s chief economist. Photo credits: Marcel de Heide / LinkedIn
Europe’s drive for competitiveness is pushing research organisations to show the value they add to the economy. For TNO, the Netherlands’ top applied science organisations, this means first confronting the fact that its impact on society remains largely unmeasured.
Earlier this month in Brussels, TNO showcased stories about radar technology and green hydrogen to European Commission officials, using narrative instead of numbers to demonstrate science’s real-world impact.
The two stories illustrated how technologies mature through a web of research projects, driven by people, markets and unexpected opportunities. Both showed how complex and difficult to define the innovation process can be.
“Underlying this impact is not a single research project,” Marcel de Heide, TNO’s chief economist and host of the event, told Science|Business. This has implications for innovation…
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