The Arnhem-Nijmegen region has been making great strides for years in the fields of Health and High Tech, Food and Energy. However, there is a risk of fragmentation: local authorities, businesses and knowledge organisations working at cross-purposes rather than reinforcing one another. The new partnership between Briskr and The Economic Board Arnhem-Nijmegen Region aims to change that.
Briskr’s programme managers, Martijn Kriens and Bas Doets, are sitting opposite John van Sambeek, a civic entrepreneur specialising in Health and High-tech, and Jan van Dellen, managing director of The Economic Board. The four of them are discussing the new partnership and, above all, the shared goal they have for the future: to improve the region’s overall prosperity through economic development.
The division of responsibilities within the partnership was obvious. “The Economic Board consists of directors, and together we determine the strategy for the region. What should we focus on, and in which direction do we want to develop?” Van Dellen begins. “But strategy alone isn’t enough; you also need implementation. Briskr was already active as a consortium of organisations working on the themes of Health and High Tech, so a partnership made perfect sense.”
Martijn Kriens explains that Briskr had already noticed that there were too many ideas coexisting side by side in the region. “The implementation of ideas kept falling through because there was no overarching strategy. As Briskr, we would never have been able to secure the funding for overarching societal challenges. And The Economic Board, to a lesser extent, lacked the capacity to translate its ideas into concrete actions in the fields of Health and High Tech. Our collaboration now resolves this. The Economic Board provides the strategy, and we organise the partner networks based on that strategy.”
One clear point of contact
Both organisations agree: the collaboration will also provide a single, clear point of contact for the Health and High-Tech community in the region. “Our partners and businesses need to know where to go to seek out collaboration,” explains John van Sambeek. “Research institutions need government bodies and businesses, and vice versa. Only together can we solve major societal problems.”
“By providing a single point of contact, we create clarity,” adds Bas Doets. “That way, you don’t waste time talking to the wrong partners. It used to be like this: the government provided funding, The Economic Board identified which themes were important for the region, and Briskr brought parties together based on its own objectives. There was too little connection, and as a result, everything remained non-binding.”
Because The Economic Board represents leadership in the region, that lack of commitment has now been eliminated. “Our partners are not only part of the strategy, but now actually determine the strategy,” explains Van Dellen. “Without direction, taking action is pointless.”
The direction
What direction will this take now that Briskr and The Economic Board are working together? “We can be brief on that: the broad prosperity agenda,” explains Kriens. “Take the Digital Health Challenge Lab, for example. Through this initiative, we’re looking at the challenge that an ageing population poses for healthcare. After all, twice as much care will need to be provided in the future if we do nothing. Given the way healthcare is currently organised, that’s an impossible task. Innovations in processes and technology are desperately needed.”
Arnhem and Nijmegen may be a little smaller than the Randstad, but we face metropolitan challenges in this region too. These go beyond healthcare: think of issues such as heavy traffic and a tight housing market. Or the problem of unsafe and unhealthy neighbourhoods, which results in high healthcare costs. “When we assess our region, we see that we’re performing at an average level. So we’re missing out on too many opportunities,” says Van Dellen.
Visibility
And in doing so, local residents must also see the benefits of what we do. “It has to benefit them,” adds Kriens. “That ranges from very broad initiatives, such as utilising Briskr’s partner network to identify economic and social trends, to very practical ones, such as using AI to improve cancer treatments. The more we focus on the local community, the more visible it becomes exactly what we’re doing here in the region. And we desperately need that visibility.”
Greater visibility of our region’s potential provides the necessary insights to central government and at European level, explains Van Sambeek. “The better we promote our region, the more interest we’ll attract from triple helix partners outside this region. If we’re not visible enough, we’ll also miss out on the support and funding needed to turn great ideas into concrete programmes and projects.”
That visibility starts on a very small scale, explains Van Dellen. “I recently visited the municipality of Berg en Dal on behalf of The Economic Board. They wondered why I was there, as they are such a small municipality. But that’s the wrong attitude. As many as 40 per cent of Berg en Dal’s residents work in the healthcare sector, for example: so it’s important to engage with them, for instance on digitalisation in healthcare. Do people need further training to enable more remote care provision?”
A new boost
With this new collaboration, Briskr and The Economic Board will boost entrepreneurship and the development of the Health and High Tech sector in the coming years. "We will map the ecosystem and together look for investors, knowledge and missing links. By giving our region extra visibility, we activate frontrunners to join in," Van Dellen concludes. "We need to get beyond a subsidised pilot project, and we will succeed with this cooperation. We combine long-term strategy, with implementation that gets support from all kinds of parties in the region!"
Briskr's partners are
- Radboud University,
- Radboudumc,
- Arnhem Nijmegen University of Applied Sciences,
- Gelderland province,
- Municipality of Nijmegen,
- Health Valley,
- OostNL,
- HightechNL,
- Noviotech campus,
- SMB
- The Economic Board Arnhem-Nijmegen.
In addition, Briskr is financially and substantively supported by several companies in the region.
