Within the next 7 weeks my columns will consist about two things; first I will identify the main challenge of that week. Then, I will write about a few Climate-KIC initiatives that are trying to deal with these problems. These initiatives can be either start-ups or Climate-KIC projects. As a Climate-KIC student, I am trying to promote my platform and hope to inspire my fellow students with initiatives from the Climate-KIC community.
Hello. Today I will introduce the set-up of my column idea. As a master student Management of Technology, I am enrolled in the Climate-KIC program. Climate-KIC is Europe's main Climate initiative. Its activities can be classified in four pillars; education for (MSc or PhD) students, partnering with businesses, supporting entrepreneurs in clean businesses through different incubators and liaising with public bodies.
A lot of projects have been generated by the Climate-KIC platform and many startups have developed through Climate-KICs incubating projects. These initiatives can be classified in one of the eight themes of Climate-KIC; click here to find out more about these different themes.
Different themes of Climate-KIC
Projects of Climate-KIC are usually a collaboration of Climate-KIC and several partners. These partners can be either academic institutions, research institutions or industry and more often than not, it is a blend of these three. The aim of these project is to identify markets for climate mitigation and adaption innovations through pathfinder projects, and invest in innovation projects to create products and services and take them to market through existing businesses, new joint ventures and spin-off companies.
Start-ups are, well, start-ups. Young, bright-minded people who have an idea but initially have no clue how to bring those ideas to the market and actually change something. Climate-KIC supports these entrepreneurs with money and tacit knowledge about growing businesses. It also connects them to people who have the know-how and experience about growing market. A source of these bright minds is the Climate-KIC summer school "The Journey", which I successfully finished as proved by the image above.
Every week a set of information about the topic of the week is generated within this platform. I will pick out some things that have been discussed last week and then introduce some of the Climate-KIC initiatives that are related to this. Therefore, my next column will be about the topic of the first week - sustainable transitions.
So why did I choose this setup? Well, as Geels (2004) says, transitions come about when dynamics at these three levels (niches, regimes and landscape developments, TS) link up and reinforce each other. Furthermore, he quotes from an older source that cognitive routines make engineers and designers look in particular directions and not in others. So, by informing the engineers of this course (that will read this column...) about the outcomes of Europe's main climate initiative, I hope to kickstart the transition! Theoretically, that should work right??
(Okay, maybe I am just looking to promote my platform as a Climate-KIC student...;))
Thijs Schaap
