Just returned from a pre-launch party organized by the Sandfire team. Sandfire brought the city of Utrecht and Microsoft together, culminating in a green spotlight for the Dom of Utrecht symbolizing the Xbox 360 launch on December 2. In Utrecht you can get a bachelor in games design, the city is now even positioning itself as […]
It looks like the Dutch parliament is putting its arms around a Dutch Small Business Act now, a discussion I ignited with my June 21 press conference and the subsequent reaction from the Dutch Minister of International Trade. Today I received an email from Dutch member of parliament (MP) Mr. Jan ten Hoopen (CDA) that he now […]
The Dutch Minister of Foreign Trade Mrs. Karien van Gennip sent a letter this week to Dutch Parliament, answering MP-questions resulting from my June 21 press conference.In summary her letter covers three topics (to download the Dutch letter as Word document, click here):1. The Minister agrees that European SMEs cannot compete on equal footing with American […]
…through innovation. Thursday I attended Joris Craandijk’s seminar "Innovation, the new Passion in Business", where he looked back as project leader of the now highly successful Heineken BeerTender product. For his seminar Joris had lined up a number of interesting speakers. Some were able to refresh parts of our mind that other speakers cannot reach. […]
It’s more difficult in one country than another to do business. That’s the idea behind a study published last week by the World Bank, ranking 155 countries on a set of criteria including Starting a business, Hiring and firing, Getting credit, Protecting investors, Paying taxes and Trading across borders.For 2006, the top 3 countries in […]
On Tuesday I hosted a press conference at press centre Nieuwspoort in the Hague. After extensive lobbying and networking for about 3 weeks, I was able to get the weak position of European SMEs on the agenda in the Netherlands. As the Dutch representative of SUN&SUP, the "voice of the European start-up community", we are […]
