Interview Jacob Ruiter

Jacob Ruiter, CC manager InnoEnergy Benelux

InnoEnergy is a knowledge innovation community focusing on sustainable energy and partner of the TU/e. At InnoEnergy we support and invest in innovation at of the journey - from classroom to end customer. TU Eindhoven, a partner of InnoEnergy, offer two master programmes: Sense and Select.

In October 2017 a new CC, Jacob Ruiter, was appointed.

At the end of last year you became the CC Manager of InnoEnergy Benelux. Why did you take the opportunity to go work for InnoEnergy?

My entire career I have been working in the field of energy. From upstream, searching for oil and gas in Africa, to downstream, delivering electricity and gas to companies. In addition to that, I have also worked in heat and consultancy for the energy sector. My front row experience has given me a thorough understanding of the energy landscape.

But there comes a moment in everyone’s professional career that you stop, reflect and ask yourself: What else is there to learn? How can I contribute to a more sustainable and competitive Europe? The answer was quite simple. Everything starts with new ideas. Fresh ways of looking at existing problems. And to solve these problems the answer is help foster innovation. Right there and then I know I wanted to be part of these process. I wanted to be right in the middle.

At the same time InnoEnergy was recruiting a new CC manager to turn the Benelux operations. I took a chance and sometime later I got offered the job of CC Manager Benelux.

The main goal of InnoEnergy is to stimulate innovation in the area of sustainable energy. We were suffering from an economic crisis when the first three KIC’s were established. During which very limited recourses were available. Nowadays, the development of sustainable energy is stimulated by many different organizations. In this current situation, is InnoEnergy still as valuable as it used to be?

Absolutely. I strongly believe that innovation does not happen in isolation and nobody has an all/compassing answer to a problem. You know that old saying “It takes a village? “. It certainly applies to innovation. At InnoEnergy we believe that working together is essential, indispensable even to achieve the goal of a more sustainable future. Our whole infrastructure as a company is based on the principle that we are stronger when you cooperate with others. One of our greatest achievements is that we have been able to create an international ecosystem of students, industry, government bodies, and education institutions such as TU Eindhoven. And keeps expanding throughout our existence.

We are only happy to see other initiatives are also stimulating the creation of sustainable energy solutions. These initiatives are complimentary to each other and to ours. For example we work with SDE (Stimulering Duurzame Energieproductie) they mainly focus on the Dutch market. But at InnoEnergy we have access to insights and solutions from other regions in Europe that can be complimentary to SDE solutions.

In our experience it is not only about the money. It is not only about the technology. To launch a new product successfully, you need to understand the entire value chain, the regulatory framework and also your market. What problem does the product solve for whom? So we do not only invest financially, but we support by guiding our innovators in the creation of and effective go to market strategy.

The TU/e also has a local incubator; Innovation Lab. What makes InnoEnergy still can contribute in Eindhoven?

We believe so. At InnoEnergy we work with incubators, accelerators and the industry (SME’s and Large Corporates) fostering innovations. Each and every player has a role to play in the innovation process.

Incubators play a pivotal role in the entrepreneurial process. They offer infrastructure, coaching and networks in the early stages of a start-up. Their contribution is very important because it prepares the teams for the next step. After that, we at InnoEnergy can help them get closer to the market by enhancing the teams skills or help them with the revenue modeling and introduce them to first customers, investors in The Benelux and in other countries in Europe. Our reach is European wide and that is the power of our network.

As a matter of fact we work with several incubators and accelerators both in the Netherlands and in Belgium. University of Groningen, Rockstart!, Watt Factory just to name a few.

At the TU/e we worked with Team Energy as a partner during the Energy Now congress in May 2018. But we very much like to work with the Innovation Lab as they have some great innovations that would certainly benefit from our programs. And also we are partners and we could learn from each other. For reasons I do not understand, a cooperation with Innovation Lab has not evolved.

The co-location Benelux has KU leuven, TU/e, TNO and VITO as “formal partners”. All of these are knowledge institutions. Are you not missing the industry?

Yes that is right, I agree on that. We are working on new ideas about what our ideal ecosystem in the Benelux should look like. We are doing this together with our four formal partners. We have a PhD candidate from the TU/e as part of our team. She is focusing on mapping the energy landscape in the Benelux, all the players and their business models. The objective of this study is to make an informed choice as to what would be a good partner. And by this I mean is how we as InnoEnergy can contribute to their business and vice versa. Industry is certainly missing in our ecosystem. So we have still a lot of work to do.

Even though InnoEnergy is specialized in sustainable energy, you also have thematic fields ‘Clean Coal and Gas Technologies’ and ‘Nuclear Instrumentation’. How do these fit into your organization?

If you look at France, a large part of what they use in energy is originating from nuclear power plants. In the Netherlands we still have a large share that is generated with coal as in Eastern Europe. The reality is that in this day and age not enough renewable energy is generated to cover the needs of the market. So we are still depended on coal- fired power plants. Therefore they are still an important part of the overall energy transition. We cannot ignore their existence and feel responsible for ensuring that these resources, which are not sustainable, are as clean, efficient and safe as possible.

Hopefully when we are progressing further in the energy transition, these thematic fields will become less relevant. It is even likely that at some point, they will not even be a thematic field anymore. Over time, we are constantly reflecting whether our thematic fields are representing the energy transition. Seven years ago ‘Storage’ was not a very interesting topic, however it is really relevant today and therefore became one of our new thematic fields.

Contact

InnoEnergy
Kennispoort 6th floor · John F. Kennedylaan 2
5612 AB Eindhoven · The Netherlands