Heijmans seeks innovation power from SMEs through KVK Business Challenge

Heijmans is a company that is active in real estate, residential construction, utilities, and infrastructure. They are calling on innovative SME entrepreneurs to help think about sustainable charging options for electric equipment on construction sites, outside of working hours. Entrepreneurs can share their smart and creative solutions from 30 March 2023 via the KVK Business Challenge platform.

Heijmans has projects all over the country where electric equipment is used. Together with an SME, the company wants to develop one or more energy concepts around charging large equipment (> 125 KW) to generate, store, and supply energy to equipment in a decentralised way.

5 other challenges

Besides Heijmans, 5 other large organisations are presenting their issues to innovative small SMEs: the Ministry of Defence (Navy), Renolit, GS Staalwerken, Bosan, and De 5Ghub (Ericson, Vodafone).

Autonomous sailing

The largest shipbuilder of the Netherlands, Damen Shipyards, used the KVK Business Challenge to look for an innovation partner to help allow their ships sail more autonomously. Through the platform, several parties presented their ideas, including Sea Machines Robotics. Michiel Louwerse of Damen Shipyards is happy with the collaboration: "For this challenge, we were looking for a short-term feasible solution that we could implement on our ships. We got into contact with Sea Machines Robotics through the KVK Business Challenge. It soon became clear that we could make good partners. It eventually led to a formal collaboration in early 2021."

Innovative capacity

The KVK Business Challenge is an open innovation platform that brings together innovation questions that large companies are facing and the power to innovate that comes from SMEs. Large companies pitch their dilemma on the online platform. Entrepreneurs can respond to the challenge and other people’s comments through the chat. After 5 weeks, the most promising contributors are invited for an introductory meeting to get started with their ideas.

Renewed platform

Starting 30 March 2023, participants can visit the renewed platform kvk.nl/businesschallenge. Here you can find more information on how the programme works and all the current challenges. More than 100 large companies have already offered their dilemma and 10,000 SMEs from the Netherlands and abroad participated in the programme.

Note to the editors:

For more information, please contact KVK via email (pers@kvk.nl) or call 06 30 35 29 21.