Campus Amsterdam
The City of Amsterdam has announced a significant investment in the Campus Amsterdam project. Set up by the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS), Campus Amsterdam is a sustainable regional network of innovation areas and campuses.
The Amsterdam Metropolitan Area is home to a wide variety of innovation areas – places where research, businesses and government organisations come together to work on new developments in science and industry. Of these, 37 are members of Campus Amsterdam, including the Marineterrein in central Amsterdam, the Innovation District Zuidas and Prodock, the Port of Amsterdam’s innovation hub.
Exploring new opportunities
In the coming two years, the City of Amsterdam will invest €180,000 in this network to explore where even more connections and synergies are possible. Campuses and innovation hubs are seen as significant development tools for a range of sectors. They can play a prominent role as locations for new startups and other businesses; and they are also where partnerships within the triple helix of academia, industry and government can take shape.
Interdisciplinary methods of addressing future challenges
“Campuses are places where co-creation is concentrated,” says Willem van Winden, professor for urban economic studies at AUAS. And these co-creation processes can be of paramount importance in the near future: “There are so many societal challenges that we will have to work on in an interdisciplinary manner in the coming years.”
A natural home for startups
Startups and scale-ups are a crucial part of the process, and they find their natural home at campuses and similar hubs, says Bas Beekman, director of StartupAmsterdam: “The embedding of these types of companies in a strong ecosystem is of great importance, and campuses play a significant role. [StartupAmsterdam] is committed to forging strong connections between innovative companies and knowledge institutions, and to developing interesting locations where these types of companies can flourish.” Strong campuses will also raise the international profile of the Amsterdam Area, according to Beekman. “Campus Amsterdam can also help to improve the profile of the region as a whole, at home and abroad, as a hotspot for startups and scale-ups with a wide range of dynamic environments.”
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