January 2020
The past Decennium has been a period of many discoveries. Let’s make the next one a Decennium of experiments and action!
In 2019, after 8 years of entrepreneurship, I finally felt like a ‘real’ entrepreneur. The first years were pretty easy. Back in 2011, I started as Krull Interim Solutions, helping organisations with their Digital Transformation challenges. It was a matter of letting the network know when I would be in the market for the next assignment.
I studied all the topics that caught my interest. Amongst them were Agile, SAFEe, CI/CD and of course Blockchain. It was so much fun to join all the early-stage Blockchain meetups and talks. Imagine a global meetup with approximately 150 visitors at the 4th d10e event [i] in Amsterdam, where I was lucky to be one of the volunteers. I guess we all felt the excitement of being an early adopter of something that was expected to become bigger soon.
Next to Blockchain many other new technologies entered the space. One after another, and they came faster and faster: 3D printing, IoT, AI, VR, AR, Quantum Computing, you name it. I added services as keynote speaker at events, team meetings, off-sites and panels about what I saw as new and disrupting.
It was a life-changing experience to be part of global hackathons such as Blockchain&IoT[ii] (Frankfurt Business School) and Hack4Climate[iii] (co-organised by the United Nations) in 2017. I learned about places in the world where children could not go out of their houses due to health-threatening smog. And about places in the world that were close to disappearance due to rising sea level (for example the Fiji-islands).
In summary, I learned about the state of our planet and how new technologies could contribute to a more sustainable world. Next to Sustainability, I learned about Circularity. It gives you insight in the end2end route of materials and makes you aware of what really needs to be done to heal this planet.
With added services in the area of Blockchain, Smart Contracts, Smart City, and IoT you’ll understand why I changed my company name into Krull Smart Solutions.
My latest discoveries were the many hidden gems in the Province of Flevoland. As vice-chair of the supervisory board of Horizon Flevoland[iv] – the regional development organisation – I discovered organisations and movements in Flevoland I had never heard of before. I mention just a few of them:
– The first European Up-Cycle Centre, attracting visitors from all over the world;
– a growing amount of Circular entrepreneurs – some of them more than 10 years active in the circular economy – servicing many corporates, well known dutch TV shows and worldwide known celebrities (don’t like namedropping but trust me, this is really surprising);
– Impactful innovations in the area of Design, Future Mobility, Health and Sustainability
Add to this the opportunity to graduate as an Entrepreneur at the University of Applied Sciences Windesheim[v], get investment for innovation at Horizon Flevoland and – last but not least – the fact that Flevoland for 4 years in a row shows one of the highest economic growth rates in the Netherlands, see a recent publication of ING[vi]. I started to wonder: how come I didn’t see this before?
I decided to bring together people of different backgrounds with an interest in Business and new technologies. Within three months we had almost 140 members in the Meetup group SmartCommunity[vii], without much publicity. As an Entrepreneur this makes you happy, it shows there is potential!
The combination of Innovation, SmartCity and the hidden gems in the province of Flevoland are the basis for additional services of my company. Which brings me to the company name: Krull Interim Solutions already changed into Krull Smart Solutions. What about the new ‘Solutions’? I decided to be pragmatic and change it one more time into ‘Krull Solutions’.
If you are interested in the new services please keep an eye on the – currently under construction – new website[viii], where you can read about all the different flavours of innovation services!
In 2020 we will be communicating more about the services across the entire Innovation Journey. With the right level of attention for Sustainability and Circularity, using the skills of
Entrepreneurship, Innovation and everything we learned during the first Decennium of this Century.
2020 is about experimenting, let’s go!
[i] https://d10e.biz/
[ii]www.frankfurt-school.de/home/research/centres/blockchain
[iii]hack4climate.org
[iv] horizonflevoland.com
[v] windesheim.com
[vi] https://www.ing.nl/zakelijk/kennis-over-de-economie/onze-economie/de-nederlandse-economie/publicaties/verwachtingen-voor-de-nederlandse-economie-in-cijfers.html
[vii] www.meetup.com/nl-NL/Smart-Community/
[viii] krullsolutions.com