Innovation Ecosystems Unpacked

Lotte Leufkens, founder and CEO of CloudCuddle and Maria Carmen Punzi, PhD candidate at RSM in Menstrual Health and Social Change, share their expertise and insights about social entrepreneurship to contribute to Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship's SHE LEADS research. 

Knowledge-intensive startups are considered to be key drivers of innovation and have an enormous impact on society. However, they face a unique and complex set of challenges in their growth trajectory. But what are knowledge-intensive startups exactly and how can they scale up in such a challenging and complex landscape? In the fifth episode of our podcast series ''Innovation Ecosystems Unpacked'', find out more about the innovation ecosystem surrounding knowledge-intensive startups and scaleups during an engaging conversation between Chris Eveleens (advisor at AWTI) and Cinzia Silvestri (founder and CEO of Bi/ond), moderated by our director Martin Luxemburg.

At some point in a startup’s growth trajectory, scaling up often means going international. But how should startups leverage their innovation ecosystem to successfully expand internationally? Which international markets should they consider? Is there a difference when scaling to China, the US or within Europe? What is an optimal international growth strategy? In this episode, together with internationalisation experts and founders of weGrow, Gernot Schwendtner and Florent Coudyser, Martin Luxemburg unpacks the key factors to consider when scaling internationally.

The 2nd episode dives into the funding landscape within innovation ecosystems for startups and scaleups.  This time Rinke Zonneveld, Executive Director of InnovationQuarter, and Gianluca Valentini, VP Marketplace Operations at HousingAnywhere | Venture Advisor at EQT Ventures | Founding Partner of Great Stuff Ventures, joins Martin Luxemburg in a fascinating discussion about the importance of access to capital within an innovation ecosystem. How should startups and scaleups navigate through the complex capital landscape, with different types of (international) investment and myriads of stakeholders each playing a different (supportive) role? We unpack these complexities in this episode and address not only the availability of capital in an innovation ecosystem, but also how accessible it really is.

In this 1st episode, we start unpacking the functioning of innovation ecosystems for startups and scaleups. Our Director Martin Luxemburg does this by engaging in an open discussion with Rogier Thewessen, co-founder of YoungCapital and Prof. Dr. Justin Jansen, Corporate Entrepreneurship Professor at RSM (EUR) and Academic Director of Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship. Do innovation ecosystems exist as such? Or are they just an expression of the organisations and the individuals operating in it? We unpack the effects of these interactions in this intro episode to find out what’s specific about them.