Jonathan Andrews reports from Amsterdam on how the city government has developed an eco-system for start-up launches with the intention of positioning the city as both accelerator and customer.
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Outdoor Office Day 2025

On June 12th 2025 we will celebrate the 7th edition of the international Outdoor Office Day. It’s an open invitation to take your work outside, reconnect with the surrounding urban nature around your office.
This year’s theme is 'Connecting with each other’: with your direct colleagues, colleagues from other departments, neighbours, or external relations. Please join the growing network of individuals and companies that take their work outside more and more often. Get inspired whilst you spend time surrounded by urban nature. This enhances new and meaningful relationships, stimulates the flow of good ideas and supports the forging of valuable collaborations.
Please meet our partners and participants:
https://www.outdoorofficeday.nl/participants
If in Amsterdam we invite for wanderwalk with sustainable leaders. Join us in Amsterdamse Bos to discuss your dilemma's, learn from each other and connect.
Vacancy: PhD position on The Organization of Innovation for Sustainability Transition at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Have you obtained a master's degree in social and/or organization sciences, and would you like to study innovation and change? Then consider joining our interdisciplinary team with a PhD research on accelerating sustainability transitions!
This PhD position is part of an interdisciplinary team of three PhD researchers, one postdoc, and two senior researchers in the project ‘EXTRA’: <em>From EXperiment to sustainable change: TRAnsformative methodologies for innovation and learning</em>. EXTRA is a collaboration between multiple universities and public and private partners to research and advance physical and experimental environments as enabling methodologies for learning and innovation, also known as living labs.
Living labs are applied by various change-makers, including governmental actors, industry partners, NGOs, researchers, and citizens, to co-create innovations. However, while much experimentation and innovation occur, achieving long-term systemic change remains difficult. Therefore, the main purpose of EXTRA is to amplify the transformative power of living labs with novel insights, instruments, and human capacities, thus enabling change-makers to make sustainable changes and societal impacts.
In the consortium this PhD research will focus on the organization of innovation to accelerate sustainability transition. More specifically, by gathering knowledge and analyses across different fields and cases, this research will identify and validate (inter)organizational approaches, interventions, and business models to overcome barriers and enable the public-private collaboration needed for embedding, translating, and scaling innovations.
For more information about the project, please visit: https://www.nwo.nl/nieuws/financiering-voor-onderzoeksproject-over-fysieke-experimentele-omgevingen ; https://www.tudelft.nl/2024/bk/nwo-financiering-voor-innovatief-onderzoek-naar-fysieke-experimentele-omgevingen.
PhD translation: Capturing change in the energy transition and beyond (with Tessa de Geus)

(this event is in Dutch)
De actie-onderzoekers van DRIFT werken jarenlang aan hun proefschrift en ontwikkelen daarmee state-of-the-art kennis en tools. Traditioneel gezien wordt deze kennis echter alleen ontsloten in boekvorm en overgedragen aan hun commissie van (hoog)leraren. Daarom organiseren we naast een PhD-verdediging een PhD-vertaling.
Op 11 april is de beurt aan Tessa de Geus. We duiken in haar proefschrift ‘Capturing change’ (<em>verandering vatten).</em> Het onderwerp: verschillende vormen van ‘capture’ in de energietransitie – krijgen radicale nieuwe initiatieven of ideeën de wind eronder zodra ze zich op een groter speelveld begeven of raken ze vleugellam?
Hoewel de term buiten de transitiewetenschap (nog) niet zo bekend is, is ‘capture’ een heet hangijzer voor wie werkt aan fundamentele maatschappelijke verandering. Denk aan een overheid die een burgerinitiatief ondersteunt of eigen innovatieve praktijken opschaalt – in grote veranderingsprocessen als de energietransitie is veel hoop gevestigd op zulke nieuwe bestuursvormen, maar is weinig bekend over de schaduwzijde ervan, stelt Tessa.
Net als bij de PhD-verdediging beginnen we met een ‘lekenpraatje’ — Tessa legt in begrijpelijke taal uit wat ze heeft onderzocht en welke conclusies en aanbevelingen daaruit volgen.
Daarna openen we het gesprek. Onze drie panelleden stellen zich kort voor en dan gaan met de promovendus in gesprek over vragen als: wat betekenen jouw uitkomsten voor mijn beleid, bedrijf of activisme? Wat herken ik en wat zie ik toch anders? En hoe zouden we opgedane lessen en methodes kunnen toepassen in ons (werk)veld?
Op 11 april kun je van 10:00-11:00 via YouTube live meekijken met dit evenement. Meer informatie vind je op onze website: