Against All Odds: How Eindhoven Emerged as a Deeptech Ecosystem

Abstract

The Brainport-Eindhoven region has developed into a leading location for deeptech entrepreneurship in Europe. Against all odds, it has transformed itself from a region that heavily depended on the multinational company Philips, into a diverse and fast-growing deeptech ecosystem. While this success has not gone unnoticed, there is not yet a clear account of how and why the Eindhoven region emerged as a global hotspot for deeptech innovation and entrepreneurship. Moreover, such an account might provide an exemplary model of a collaborative ecosystem, one that provides an alternative to the “winner-takes-all” entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley. This essay explores the performance of the Eindhoven region in terms of three structural conditions. First, the focus on deeptech R&D and entrepreneurship appears to be deeply rooted in the region’s history as well as strong competencies in systems engineering, design thinking, and multidisciplinary collaboration. Second, a collaborative approach to regional policy gives industrial, academic, and governmental actors a correlative position in its “triple helix” governance. Finally, the Eindhoven region benefits from a systemic approach toward co-locating R&D and entrepreneurial activities on five campuses. Overall, the huge complexity of deeptech systems and products apparently requires a truly collaborative approach at all levels of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Europe’s semiconductor industry at a crossroads: Industrial policy and regional clusters

“…Eindhoven is a leading technology centre accounting for nearly 25% of total Dutch R&D expenditure and 45% of the R&D expenditure of Dutch based firms (Statistics Netherlands, 2020). Companies in the region are not only more R&D-intensive than those located elsewhere in the country, but also are more likely to focus on high technology components and equipment (Romme, 2022). The Grenoble cluster is heavily focused on research, development and product design for microelectronics, nanotechnologies and related software.…”

Designing and Testing a Tool That Connects the Value Proposition of Deep-Tech Ventures to SDGs

“…Deep-tech systems and products are disruptive solutions that arise from unique, hard-to-reproduce scientific or technological advances [1] and often address big societal challenges [2]. As such, deep-tech startups seek to commercialize products that integrate extremely complex software with novel hardware [3]. Deep-tech products are typically bought by industrial customers on business-to-business (B2B) markets [3].…”

“…As such, deep-tech startups seek to commercialize products that integrate extremely complex software with novel hardware [3]. Deep-tech products are typically bought by industrial customers on business-to-business (B2B) markets [3]. The high potential returns of deep-tech ventures come with high market as well as technology risks, as argued by Portincaso et al [2] who compare deep-tech to Software as a Service (SaaS) and biotech.…”

“…Finally, deep-tech usually involves rather long investment horizons (of 10 to 20 years) before the investor can make an exit [2]. The failure rate of deep-tech ventures is thus 90% or higher [3].…”

“…This implies the so-called "valley of death", the period in which the technology has left the lab but is not yet commercially available, is extremely long and deep in the case of deeptech ventures. In terms of Technology Readiness Levels [4], the valley of death in deep-tech ranges from TRL 3 to TRL 7 [3]. This huge valley of death makes it all the more important for deep-tech entrepreneurs to formulate and communicate the value proposition of their venture to early-stage investors [2].…”