Entrepreneurship

The question of how we can get our knowledge out into society is something that occupies us daily, because this is how knowledge has impact. One way to achieve this is through entrepreneurship, and if I may say so myself, this is something we are rather good at as a university. In 2019 YES!Delft, our incubator for start-ups, was once again in the top five of university incubators worldwide. Because even if engineers are not necessarily the best entrepreneurs by nature, entrepreneurship is something you can learn. So this edition of Delft Outlook contains many do's and don'ts from lecturers and hands-on experts. Entrepreneur in residence Duke Urbanik takes us on a tour of YES!Delft and starters explain how they got the funds they needed.

We also look back on our Dies Natalis celebrations on 10 January – which already seems a long time ago. Paul Hekkert, who gave the Dies lecture, talked about a shift in the design world, in which designers are increasingly moving their focus away from designing to meet individual short-term needs, towards designing for collective long-term values.

On that same occasion, I announced that the universities and medical centres in Delft, Rotterdam and Leiden will be working together even more closely in the coming years. More about this later in this edition.

In January, TU Delft celebrated its 178th anniversary, and our Global Initiative its fifth. We now have around 250 researchers and 500 students working on projects in Africa and Asia, ranging from developing affordable MRI equipment to making the palm-oil industry more sustainable. What better way to create impact for a better society!

Professor Tim van der Hagen,
President Executive Board