The origin of the Dutch Research Delta

"What successful scientists have in common is enthusiasm for their profession, a limitless curiosity and the inward urge to find out how the world is put together."
- Dirk van Delft, 2006, Author of “De toppen van het kunnen” (Dutch scientists about their motives and work).

In recent years, the pressure of competition and the focus on operations forced KPN to spend all its resources on developments that would lead to commercial benefits in the short term. Today the competition and pressure remain. But at the same time the company realises the great importance of being prepared for future innovations. It lead to KPN’s wish to become more involved in strategic developments of technology and future ICT-services.

These processes in the KPN organisation match perfectly with TNO’s ambition to structurally cooperate with universities in order to build a bridge between the academic, innovative research and TNO’s applied innovative research.

It is in the universities’ interest to maintain a good link with industry and Research and Technology Organisations like TNO. Industry and RTO’s are the places where many students eventually find their professional careers and where academic research finds its application.

The triangular cooperation KPN-TNO-Universities will run at full speed with 12 PhD students contributing to the research programme. We focus on three research themes: the beta-oriented Liquid Bandwidth, the beta-gamma-oriented Transsectoral Innovation and the gamma-oriented Social Innovation.

Nico Baken, Senior Strategist at KPN
Laurens Hoedemaker, Director of Knowledge at TNO