Ideas transformed into business enhancing entrepreneurship exploring the "best idea of The Netherlands" case

Ideas transformed into business enhancing entrepreneurship exploring the "best idea of The Netherlands" case

Harry, D.M.
Brezet, J.C.
Harkema, S.J.M.

Industrial Design Engineering

Design Engineering

2009-12-31

In 2004 a private initiative started in the Netherlands, to stimulate innovation and the cooperation between students and industry. This resulted in the development of a television formula "The Best Idea of the Netherlands", in which students and Dutch citizens in general are challenged to enter in an annual competition with their new ideas. The competition has been presented in a series of prime time and partly live television shows with increasing popularity. In 2004 110 ideas entered the competition; in 2008 this number has reached 1836. The research question is: does this new television formula indeed foster new product and business development, how is the innovation process organized and what are the outcomes so far? The rationale behind and justification for the development of the TV-formula is that product innovation has to be stimulated. Failure rates are high and The Netherlands lags behind on innovation in comparison to other European counterparts (Lisbon council, 2008). European countries have embraced this goal in the Lisbon treaty as their primary objective for 2010: to become leader in innovation worldwide. Innovation is a driver for national economic growth (Smits, 2006) and for continuity and company growth (Brezet, 2004; Harkema, 2004). Sources of innovation stem from companies as well as research education institutes, including students. The BIN television formula as presented in this paper is a mechanism through which co-operation between SME business and academia is fostered. The first results of the study indicate that the BIN-formula has triggered a new, very popular approach for product innovation in the Netherlands. Several stakeholders seem to profit from this phenomenon: Vacu Vin Ltd. as the first European TV-based product innovative company, IdtV and SBS6 as TV-producers and the general public as co-creators of their ‘own’ new products. The platform resulted in 14 products which were launched on the market and 100 in development. The television show also triggered educational institutes to set up new courses to stimulate creativity and to participate in the television program. In the next phase of the project, a theoretical reflection and refining of the model are envisaged.

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EFMD

Proceedings of the 2009 EFMD Entrepreneurship Conference, 26-27 February 2009, Barcelona, Spain

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2009 The Author(s)