An “ageing machine” to give new wooden floors an authentic look, an innovative prefab floor and an online tool to assist customers in the printing process: some ideas of entrepreneurs from the Northern Netherlands with large commercial potential.

To help the entrepreneurs realize their practice-driven innovations, Van der Meer & van Tilburg is co-organizer of the innovation project “Inno Noord”, that is especially assigned to the Northern Netherlands. Van der Meer & van Tilburg assists the 13 entrepreneurs by means of innovation consulting and project management. The project is organized under the umbrella of the Entrepreneurial Squares Project: an initiative of the Chamber of Commerce and the governmental innovation agency Syntens to support entrepreneurship in the region.

The 13 SMEs will each receive a grant of € 30,000 to spend two years on research and development for the realization of their idea. Furthermore, in a collaborative project the entrepreneurs will work on increasing their own company’s innovative capacity. To gain insight into the current state of their innovative capacity, the innovation scan is used, which was developed by Van der Meer & Van Tilburg. Based on the results practical actions are designed to strengthen their innovative capacity.

Entrepreneurs from SMEs play an important role in the regional economy. This is especially true for the Northern Netherlands, where a staggering 75% of employment is generated by SMEs. By supporting these entrepreneurs by means of an innovation project, the regional economy is given a boost, especially in the sectors of healthcare, IT, construction, agribusiness, engineering and logistics.