Lars Smits is Business Developer within LIOF's Innovation Support team. In his role, he stimulates and guides Limburg entrepreneurs, from startup to SME, in making innovations. 

Through a number of knowledge projects, LIOF wants to inspire a large group of entrepreneurs to innovate their products, services, processes and/or business models. The CollectiveProject (part of LimburgToekomstbestendig) has been set up for this purpose. The chosen themes are linked to the social transitions: energy, circularity, health and digitalization.

'From LIOF we want to encourage the entrepreneur to work with innovation. The world is changing. There are new developments in all kinds of areas. You have to keep up to date and keep renewing yourself. Otherwise, at some point, you will fall behind the rest. 

You can't keep running your business the way it is now forever. Change is necessary to be successful in the longer term and to future-proof your business. That is the idea behind this program.'

'We are now in the middle of summer vacation, also known as the cucumber time. An excellent time to think about your plans after the summer. What would you still like to do or learn in the area of business? Maybe there is even room for some self-development. That is why we also called the whole thing 'back to school'.

For entrepreneurs, the knowledge programs are primarily a time investment. At least we remove the financial hurdle. It is a trade-off that the entrepreneur must make for himself. 'Do I continue with my daily business, or do I park that for a while to start something new'. In the end, these trajectories again provide ideas for new business models to stay relevant in the long run.'

'Also interesting is that you get to connect with other people. Entrepreneurs who are struggling with the same challenge(s). The feedback we get from the participants is that this is exactly what they got the most out of, the networking, knowledge sharing and cross-pollination. A number of collaborations have already emerged in this way. You don't innovate alone - of course, that's why it's called the CollectiveProject.

The approach is to put a number of entrepreneurs in a room with the same issue. Hence, we are looking for several motivated participants so that eventually a nice group of like-minded people will emerge.'

Knowledge trajectories:

• CIRCO Track Horticultural Residual Flows
• Brightlands AI Academy                                  
• Business Models in the Circular economy  
• Design Thinking
• CIRCO Track business opportunities for sustainability                                               
• Change Management
• Energy Transition, the Role of Public Private Collaboration
• Sustainability
• Food & Healty Living

Click on a specific knowledge track for more information, start date and application submission date.

'The CollectiveProject is an ongoing program, within which we continue to offer various knowledge trajectories. The starting point for the selection of the themes are always the transition themes. Then we looked at which knowledge partner provides the expertise and who is best at what. For example, for the current offering we ended up collaborating with Hogeschool Zuyd, Brightlands, HAS, CIRCO and UMIO|Maastricht University.'

Regulation

The scheme covers 75% of the cost of participating in a knowledge course with a maximum amount of €7,500.

For whom?

Startups, scale-ups and SMEs (sector-wide) based in Limburg and motivated to innovate within the societal tasks (transitions) energy, circularity, health and digitalization.

Next submission dates

Wednesday, Oct. 19