In her inaugural address, Professor Fleur Deken highlighted the critical challenges of our time and the essential role of innovation in addressing them. How do we prevent a healthcare crisis? How do we achieve our climate goals? Despite the abundance of innovative ideas, Deken pointed out that many promising projects fail due to the traditional ways innovation is organized. Conflicting interests, for instance, often prevent solutions that seem viable on paper from succeeding in practice. To counter this, she proposed a research agenda focused on new forms of collaboration and governance, emphasizing the need for a collaborative approach to innovation.
One example of this is Fieldlabs@Scale project, which explores experimental spaces for mission-oriented innovation. These field labs span various industries—smart industry, healthcare, agriculture, and infrastructure—where participants collaborate to develop solutions in an environment where failure is part of the learning process. Alongside policymakers, regional organizations, and other stakeholders, the team of researchers aims to generate a set of mechanisms for scaling innovative solutions developed in fieldlabs.
Deken is also deeply involved in the OPEN-QUAL project , which addresses the challenge of scaling qualitative research to facilitate collaboration. The project focuses on reusing qualitative data from previous ethnographic studies. The aim is to overcome barriers to data reuse and ensure valuable insights are preserved and shared across projects. The OPEN-QUAL team is creating a platform to facilitate the discovery of relevant datasets, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange across different disciplines.
Throughout her speech, Deken reflected on the vital role of science in driving societal innovation and underscored the importance of researchers in creating social impact. She believes in the powerful synergy between academic research and societal progress, which she promotes through education, publishing, and advising both, public and private organizations. Looking ahead, Deken plans to deepen her research into the role of knowledge institutions in mission-oriented innovation and is committed to creating real-world impact by supporting VU Amsterdam’s involvement in collaborative efforts. In her new position as Vice Dean of Research at the School of Business and Economics, Deken will have abundant opportunities to translate her vision into actionable results, further reinforcing her commitment to impactful research.
