The Activate Fellowship Model Takes Root in the Netherlands with Faculty of Impact

As an organization, we believe that to address climate change and other urgent societal needs, we need more science and engineering innovators to turn more of their research into products and services. So we are encouraged whenever other organizations with similar goals launch programs modeled on our fellowship, because it means more scientists will turn their research into products.

In late January, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VNSU) announced Faculty of Impact, a new academic accelerator for all universities and public research institutes in the Netherlands. It will provide entrepreneurship training to freshly-minted Ph.D.s, giving early-career scientists the freedom and opportunity to develop their innovative research into businesses focused on positively impacting society. The first cohort will focus on climate and energy, while the next, to launch in 2022, will focus on health. 

We are thrilled to see this program emerge and are honored that the fellowship model we pioneered at Activate serves as its inspiration. We also have a direct link to one of Faculty of Impact’s architects, Frans Nauta. During his time at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, Nauta played a key role in creating our early fellowship curriculum and his contributions were key to our Science Innovator’s Handbook.

Much of that work has now come full circle. “I was very much inspired by the work Activate was doing. One of the lessons I learned from the EIT Climate-KIC Accelerator and ClimateLaunchpad was that these deep tech startups need more time to get to product-market-fit. That’s what the Activate model solves,” he says.

So when he got back in the Netherlands, Nauta started discussions with universities, the Dutch science funding agency NWO, the startup program Techleap, and the ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate to adopt the model to the Netherlands.

Delegates from universities and the NWO met in 2019, making quick progress in planning the program, and after delays related to COVID-19, the program expects to launch its first cohort of fellows this fall. VNSU’s founding partners are the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, which will provide the funding for the fellows, and Techleap, a organization that helps Dutch startups scale their businesses. 

Faculty of Impact is the Netherlands’ first postdoctoral program to focus on entrepreneurship. Like Activate Fellows, participants in Faculty of Impact will receive two years of training, mentorship, and lab access so that they can focus full-time on developing businesses based on their innovative ideas. All 14 institutional members of the VNSU are participating. The post-docs will be paid through the research university at which they’ll embed, but they will be exempted from standard university duties such as teaching and publishing articles.

The Case for Entrepreneurial Fellowships 
Faculty of Impact is not the first example of a fellowship modeled after ours.

The Department of Energy’s Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Programs leverage the agency’s world-class National Laboratory system to support scientists turning their research breakthroughs into advanced manufacturing and energy technology products.

In 2018, MaRS Discovery District, a Canadian organization that advises and supports startups and has created an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate, academic and government partners, launched the Women in Cleantech Challenge. Modeled on the Activate Fellowship, this program provides funding and laboratory access to women-led startups addressing needs across the cleantech landscape from energy to industrial biotechnology and product circularity. 

Other programs focused on building a pipeline of science-based startups to tackle climate change have emerged recently at think tanks and universities. And we know more will be launching soon. And as we continue to scale the Activate entrepreneurial fellowship model, we also believe that building a national entrepreneurial research fellowship in the U.S. can really leverage the nation’s incredible resources, scientific talent, and conviction in the power of innovation.