Cash assistance: restoring choice and dignity

Posted Posted in Blog

From 2019 until 2022 at The Netherlands Red Cross my team and I have been developing the 121 Platform: a digital platform to make cash-based humanitarian aid programs easier, safer and faster. This post is a cross-post of the article “Cash assistance: restoring choice and dignity” written by Dirk Segaar, Director of International Assistance at […]

Are you suffering from Bilateritis?

Posted Posted in Blog

Relax, I am not talking about a new strain of the Corona virus. And if you are suffering from Bilateritis, you will probably survive. Maybe not even get sick. And it is definitely not your fault. Bilateritis is an ‘organizational culture disease’ that I see occurring at many of my clients, especially in smaller organizations […]

Mission, Vision and Strategy for Pragmatists

Posted Posted in Blog

What is your Strategic Vision? What are the Strategic Goals? What is in the Strategic Plan? “Strategic” seems to be word to use to indicate that we are talking about The Most Important Thing for an organization. And when asking for specifics, nobody seems to know exactly what it means. When I was studying Business […]

Beyond Leap-Of-Faith Entrepreneurship

Posted Posted in Blog

This post could also be titled: How to avoid unnecessary risk. I encounter it with entrepreneurs more often than not: the willingness to take a leap of faith over doing the necessary ground work, or being reckless in the name of their “risk-taking confident” self-image. Eric Ries calls it “waste” in his Lean Start-up approach. […]

What is Digital Social Innovation?

Posted Posted in Blog

TLDR; Digital Social Innovation is innovation that is social in its purpose and digital in its solution. In other words: it makes the world a little bit – or a lot – better and ‘does something with computers’ to make it so. When people ask me: “What kind of work do you do?” I like […]

From fairy tale to success story

Posted Posted in Blog

A little while back one of my clients asked me to help them create a “solid project plan” for their innovative project. My simple answer: Don’t! Creating a “solid project plan” or any type of lengthy “plan” document will set you up for failure. It goes like this: you have had a brilliant idea for […]

The Challenge of Digital Innovation

Posted Posted in Blog

What is the formula for successful digital innovation? How do we make sure that it delivers value, is (financially) sustainable, can scale up and has impact? And what exactly is ‘digital innovation’ anyway? To start with the last: I see digital innovation as developing a radically innovative solution that has a digital component for a […]

Open Innovation & Open Design

Posted Posted in Blog

This article originally appeared on thespindle.org about my presentation and workshop on Technology Trends, Open Source and Open Design for Humanitarian NGOs and other organizations: On November 27th 2018, The Spindle, in collaboration with HumanityX, organised a Future Session about global technological developments and open innovation & open design. Participants to this meeting came from various organisations, sectors, […]

Reinventing Startups

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Once we have come to realize that the Silicon Valley model of startup-based innovation is not for the betterment of people and planet, but is a hyper-accelerated version of the existing growth-based capitalist Operating System increasing inequality, destroying nature and benefiting the 1%, the question arises: is there an alternative?

Should you donate to Open Source Software?

Posted Posted in Blog

In short: yes, you should! If you are a regular user and can afford it. For the longer version: read on. In this article I will explain donating is not just “the right thing to do”, but also a practical way of supporting Open Source Software (OSS). I will show you a fair and pragmatic […]

The Invisible Hole in Doughnut Economics

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Doughnut Economics is one of the best books I have read in the past few years. I believe it should be standard reading for any economics student and fills in a big gap in “normal” economics theory. Kate Raworth excellently points out how and why the traditional models and theories do not work (anymore) and […]

No Time To Waste!

Posted Posted in Blog

How are we going to feed 9+ billion people by 2050? Last week this question was at the heart of the Thought For Food Summit in Amsterdam and I had the honour and pleasure to be giving a Clinic on Opening Business Models and being invited to co-judge on the special Open Business Model Prize […]

Stop Trying To End Poverty

Posted Posted in Blog

In the past months I have started to explore and getting myself involved in Humanitarian Aid organizations (NGOs), from an innovation perspective. What I find striking is how many times I read and hear about the goal to “End Poverty”. Besides the problematic term ‘poor’, which can mean to have no money for a prolonged […]

The Promise of Quantum Computing

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CWI, the Research Center for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam, did a whole day of lectures on Quantum Computing and I was fortunate to be able to attend these lectures. This post contains some notions I picked up during the day, mainly from the practical applications and impact perspective, as these topics are most […]

The Innovator’s Toolbox

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Over the past years I have been using various models, methods and frameworks while developing innovative products and services with clients, for our own initiatives and as mentor or participator at hackathons. These have become like a ‘toolbox’ that I always have with me and can use whenever necessary. This post gives an overview of […]

Apps for Energy Hackathon

Posted Posted in Blog, Work

Being one of the partner organizations of the “Open Data Estafette” conference on Renewable Energy, my client Enexis together with Grid Operator Liander had the idea of organizing a hackathon on the subject. Meaning: going beyond the talks of the conference (mainly public servants) and towards creating innovative solutions with open data. For this idea […]

We need Radical Innovation

Posted Posted in Blog

It is not hard to see that many things have fundamentally gone wrong in our world. Just think of how rapidly we are: destroying nature, depleting natural resources and using nonrenewable fossil fuels. Furthermore, so many of us are living in complete and increasing poverty, war, sickness and just utter misery, while so many others […]

Rock Stars? No way!

Posted Posted in Blog

Having witnessed the first Rockstart Smart Energy Accelerator Demo Day in Amsterdam, I can conclude only one thing. Are these guys (yes, not a single girl, how unfortunate) rock stars? Well, their stage performance can lead me to only one conclusion: no way!

Free Software, Free Society

Posted Posted in Blog

Free software is a requirement for a modern free society. At least, according to the theme at the LibrePlanet Conference this year in Boston. I attended this excellent conference and had a great time, meeting lots of great people, listening to interesting speakers and learning a lot about what free software is about, and why […]

Your Laptop wants to be Free

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Do you want your laptop to free? Well, ‘free’ as in ‘freedom’ that is. If you looking for ‘gratis’, then this is not the article you want to read (or is it…?). But if you are fed up like me with Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS with their increasing restrictions, Planned Obsolescence, selling your […]

Privacy, who cares?

Posted Posted in Blog

Are you becoming more and more aware and concerned about your on-line privacy and related security of your digital data? I have… Of course due to the media attention to Snowden and related news, but also because of some very good documentaries on Tegenlicht and documentairenet.nl. “it just not seems feasible to really be in […]

How the 99% will have it all

Posted Posted in Blog

This post contains some of my random thoughts about a subject that has been going through my mind for quite some time now. It is coming from my deep inner conviction of optimism about our future as humanity, when we shed ourselves from our limitations and live up to our full potential. It is about […]

On-line platform DordtSport.nl

Posted Posted in Work

For my client BLiS Web & Mobile I did Project and Technical Management of DordtSport.nl, the new on-line platform for sports in the city of Dordrecht area. Besides the overall management of the project and coordinating with the client, the ‘Sportbedrijf’ Department of the Municipality of Dordrecht, I made the Software Architecture of the platform. This […]

Sustainable Business and Green IT for Housing Associations

Posted Posted in Publications

At M&I/Partners and together with NetwIT and Futura, Pim van den Broek and me surveyed 34 Housing Associations and performed two case studies on Sustainable Business and Green IT. Our research report is in Dutch and is called “Van ambitie naar actie – Duurzame bedrijfsvoering en groene ICT bij woningcorporaties” (“Ambition to Action – Sustainable […]