Minister: Netherlands to be digital gateway to Europe

Long the physical gateway to continental Europe by sea or by air, the Netherlands is now positioning itself as the digital portal to the region. That’s the pitch of the country’s Minister for Foreign Trade Karien van Gennip. She points to the statistic that the Netherlands is poised to overtake South Korea as the most wired nation by the end of this year as well as her country’s existing strengths in grid computing, embedded systems, and nanotechnology.

Van Gennip was speaking Monday at the High Tech Connections (HTC) event in Cambridge, Massachusetts, designed to foster technology exchanges and partnerships between Dutch and U.S. companies and universities.The event, the second of its kind, drew a Dutch delegation of 130 government, industry and academic officials and 150 of their U.S. peers. The first HTC took place in January 2004 in Silicon Valley and attracted 200 Dutch delegates and 400 local U.S. business executives.

The minister helped cofound HTC to try and address what she terms the “Dutch paradox,” which can equally well be applied to other European countries. “We have great research, but we don’t have the capacity to commercialize the research like the U.S. does,” she said in an interview at the event Monday. HTC runs through Tuesday.

“We aspire to be the gateway to Europe in every aspect,” she told the HTC delegates in her keynote address, which also featured a video message recorded by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

“Our global economy is built on establishing strategic communications,” Balkenende said on the video. “The U.S. and the Netherlands have a great deal in common including a creative spirit.”

Both Balkenende and Van Gennip cited their country’s attractive tax climate and its work on eliminating bureaucracy as some of the reasons why U.S. technology companies might want to set up partnerships with Dutch firms and/or establish offices in the Netherlands. Also key is the nation’s broadband penetration, they both said, quoting figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

As of December 2004, the Netherlands had over 20 broadband access lines per 100 inhabitants, according to the OECD, in second position to South Korea as the most wired country in the world. Van Gennip believes the Netherlands will surpass the Asian nation in broadband penetration by year end, she said.

The Dutch government also has an aggressive investment plan in place to try to boost the country’s technological standing in grids, embedded systems and nanotechnology. Between 2004 and 2009, the Netherlands will invest around €320 million (US$386.4 million) in nanotechnology, with half of that sum coming from the Dutch government, according to Van Gennip. The government is also pouring over €100 million into a variety of broadband and grid projects, she said. Turning to embedded systems, the Netherlands is in the process of investing hundreds of millions of euros into research and development efforts in that technology sector, Van Gennip added.

When asked about the impact of globalization, specifically outsourcing, Van Gennip contrasted the U.S. protectionist response to the more open Dutch take. “Globalization is here to stay,” she told HTC delegates. “It’s how we deal with it. You can turn it into a threat or an opportunity. You can follow the way of protectionism and become less innovative or remain an open economy — we’ve always kept that [latter] path.”

She gave the example of the Dutch textile industry as a possible model for the IT sector. In the wake of competition from China, the Dutch textile industry abandoned the manufacture of low-end textiles and instead concentrated its efforts on design and innovation. This move resulted in new business developments such as the creation of the glass fiber reinforced aluminium or Glare fabric, which is used on the fuselage of the AirBus to help make the plane fly, according to Van Gennip.

The Dutch government is working to “try and get more spinoffs out of universities” by both changing its policies on patents and on the establishment of startups, Van Gennip said in the interview. As well as looking at how Silicon Valley has nurtured new IT businesses, the Netherlands is looking to examples closer to home, notably Finland with its successful track record on patents and startups as well as France and Spain with their focus on encouraging entrepreneurs, she said.

Whatever a country does, it’s important to look at the whole picture. “You can’t just slash corporate taxes when not enough students are taking university courses in science,” Van Gennip said. Trying to get more Dutch young people interested in studying technology is “one of the most difficult problems” she faces, the minister said. “It’s the $100 million question” as how best to solve the issue, she added.

“I studied technology and loved it,” Van Gennip said. “It’s hard to understand why other people don’t like it.”

One thing that’s vital is to try and change the image of technology so it’s more attractive to students, whether it’s as something cool to study or a research path that can benefit society, the minister said. When she lived and worked in Silicon Valley, Van Gennip recalled going to parties where when people heard she was working in technology, “they’d call you a hero,” she said. “Just try that in the Netherlands!” Companies also have a responsibility to reward engineers properly financially, according them the same incentives as young lawyers and economists, Van Gennip added.

Trying to interest the younger generation in science, mathematics and technology needs to start early, the minister said. The Dutch government has been partnering with companies to target schoolchildren and in some regions of the country those efforts are paying off. “We need to look at it deeper” to find out why the programs have been successful in those areas, Van Gennip said.