X!LEAD partnership

When it comes to translating technological innovations into real business results, technology is relatively easy to come by; it is talent that is often the limiting factor
World Economic Forum

The lack of top tech talent and the challenges to attract and retain talent affect the development speed of innovation. With the X!LEAD Programme, we develop and empower top tech talent to become true innovators who can make a meaningful impact for a better society.

Hire one of our trainees and become part of our community!

The X!LEAD Innovation programme is a unique 1.5-year traineeship and offers top tech talent a challenging environment to kickstart their career. In this programme, the trainees rotate on three strategic, innovative projects for six months at a fast-growing start-up and corporates in different industries.

We recruit

As a top 20 knowledge institute worldwide on technology and a powerful source of innovation, we can use our extensive network of students, start-ups and businesses to attract talent with innovative mindsets and inspiring ambitions. We select talent with a combination of top tech knowledge, an entrepreneurial spirit and essential soft skills from all technical universities in The Netherlands. The selection takes place in a creative setting with the involvement of X!LEAD partners. The preference of our partners and trainees is taken into account in the matching to the projects. This process guarantees a match with a highly motivated trainee.

We develop & empower

In our tailor-made development programme, we equip the trainees with courses and coaching sessions on personal leadership. Consultancy skills by Roland Berger to accelerate their performance. Masterclasses on key tech developments and workshops to further develop their skillset to disrupt innovation by The Rookie Minds. The unique combination of diverse contexts increases the agility of these talented young innovation professionals and strengthens the skills required for disruptive innovation.

We innovate

As X!LEAD partner, you become part of our ecosystem of start-ups, field labs, corporates and experts. You get access to the entire group of trainees while two (or more) trainees work on innovative projects of strategic importance for your company. Additionally, we connect all partners in our network while co-create and on future talent profiles and themes as the future of work, energy transition, food transition, health, and well-being. Current partners experience this as a big plus in our unique programme:

The X!LEAD programme is a fantastic opportunity for Nouryon to spot and recruit top talent. The collaboration with the other companies makes this programme extremely strong, and the input from the start-ups ensures that the graduates bring an entrepreneurial spirit to the corporates. A unique program that did not exist. Innovation at its best.
Wiek Kleijne, Innovation Manager at Nouryon

Make an impact with an X!LEAD project and fuel your strategic innovation goals. Our trainees can work on existing innovation projects, or we can explore new initiatives with you. You have the opportunity to suggest ideas and to discuss the possibilities with our programme manager.

In the current cohort, our trainees innovate on themes as energy transition, health, the future of work, and food transition. The trainees develop new initiatives, continue or expand research propositions, or optimize services through an X!LEAD project. Below you can find more information about the current projects.

Additionally, we offer our partners the opportunity to match talent to multiple projects upfront to stimulate cross-pollination and experiment on collaboration between partners.

Do you have a theme or project in mind for a future trainee? Do not hesitate to contact Marlies Verschoor and discuss the possibilities.

New initiatives

Research

Optimization

New initiatives

Rabobank Carbon Bank accelerates sustainable food production that reduces and removes carbon emissions from the atmosphere. Our trainees create new business models by supporting or leading a pilot in carbon farming at Carbon Bank, such as agroforestry or by using satellite data to monitor emissions of agricultural clients.

Making aviation operations more sustainable is a tremendous challenge and can only be tackled when jointly working on ground-breaking solutions. At Schiphol Bright Sky, our trainees support the project team that facilitates a Living Lab where partners from education, business and government explore, shape and implement future developments to make the aviation sector more sustainable.

Basilisk makes a positive contribution by reducing the environmental impact of concrete in several ways. Our trainee develops a calculation method that shows the benefits for the environment when using Basilisk Healing Agent.

Research

DSM provides commercially attractive answers to challenges facing our world; how to feed everyone and keep them healthy and happy, tackle climate change, and enable a bio-based, restorative, circular economy. The challenge for our trainee is to develop cost-efficient and sustainable production for alternative proteins.

Meatable wants to satisfy the world’s appetite for meat without harming people, animals or the planet. Our trainee creates a new process from scratch for a simple microfluidic method based on the encapsulation and growth of cells. This method can protect the cells from shear stress inside the bioreactor.

Nostics aims to offer new ways of instantly detecting diseases and infections in patients by applying nanotechnology, photonics and machine learning. Our trainee contributes to their nanotechnology-based ultra-rapid COVID-19 test kit by enhancing the usability of the test kit with a consumable that improves the overall usability.

Optimization

ABN AMRO aims to adapt to our rapidly changing economic and social environment. In the light of sustainable IT, ABN AMRO wants to improve the way they build their IT landscape, so-called ‘Green IT’. Our trainee supports the project team on the creative and strategic change aspect while connecting different parties on sustainability and creating awareness.

Gradyent transforms heating networks in your district with a powerful Digital Twin. Tejas creates insight into current heating networks by providing virtual simulations of physical heating networks. This digital twin allows for multiple simulation scenarios and analytics and therefore results in the most optimal settings for the network at any time and all the time.

COFRA is moving towards a new way of working and becoming a network organisation while building up communities of practice. To this end, our trainee carries out a thorough network mapping of one or more of these potential communities of practice. Our trainee builds an actual dashboard to create insights into how COFRA can optimize ways of working and captures and leverages the internal knowledge that includes advising on how to build up the ecosystem further and help co-design COFRA’s approach to innovation.

Three reasons to join X!LEAD:

We recruit and select the best tech talents from our extensive network, talent you otherwise wouldn’t meet.
We bridge the gap between university and working life by empowering our trainees with our tailor-made development programme.
We fuel innovation with our projects and connect you with other partner companies, start-ups, scale-ups and field labs which offers you the opportunity to innovate together.

Our trainees are an absolute addition to any company and can be your future employee as soon as the programme ends.

Current partners about X!LEAD:

Maarten Boelens

Senior Innovation Manager at Rabobank. Rabobank joined the programme for the second time in a row.

“For our innovation department, we are looking for exceptionally talented people to develop the business models of the future. X!LEAD candidates have been carefully selected and the quality is high. With great success, two X!LEAD trainees from the first edition are now Product Owner and Innovation Lead at Rabobank. We want to have more of that!”

Jeroen Rotteveel

CEO ISISPACE Group

“It was great to participate in the X!LEAD programme again, this year with two trainees. Barbara and Siddharth have made a great contribution to our plans to move further into the value chain and develop a satellite-as-a-service proposition around climate change and space based emission monitoring. Such novel ideas need creative, out-of-the-box thinking and the X!LEAD trainees provided just that, a refreshing perspective on our business!”

Mark van Driel

Manager Innovation & Development at Anexo.

“Attractive way to get in touch with recent graduates from the TU Delft who have new insights on the energy transition in combination with experience in implementing high-end solutions. X!LEAD is a great opportunity to recruit talent and create brand awareness.”

Sadiq van Overbeek

Lead Research Engineer & Product Owner at PHYSEE.

“At PHYSEE, we started developing a new product to move into a new market. For this, we were looking for someone with a technical background that could accelerate the business development. At X!LEAD, we found the perfect candidate. Through an afternoon of speed-dating with the top candidates of the X!LEAD, we were linked to Yashasvi. Yashasvi strived to understand the complete picture leading to an excellent overview of the project, asking the right critical questions and broadening his impact on the project beyond his deliverables. In the program, the trainees receive extracurricular courses which they can directly implement in their project. Working with Yashasvi has lifted our project to a higher level!”