Innovation ecosystem developer and researcher for a sustainable data centre project

The MISD project

The MISD project aims to address the increasing climate impact of digitalization, enable energy flexibility, and the need for data sovereignty. In this project, the University of Twente and six private partners collaborate to design and develop a sustainable and secure-by-design edge datacenter in places close to end users. The innovative solutions developed in the project are tested in a fieldlab and scaled up into a viable innovation ecosystem promoting sustainable digitalization in Europe.

Your role

As our innovation ecosystem developer, you will support the creation and realization of innovation ecosystems around sustainable, modular datacenters in the MISD project. This entails facilitating collaboration and coordination across diverse stakeholders, such as private companies, universities and research institutions, government institutions, NGOs, and financial institutions, to co-design and develop innovative solutions and technologies that create value for specific end users and contribute to society. Within the MISD project, some ecosystem partners already participate in the MISD consortium, whereas other stakeholders still have to be identified, engaged, and enrolled in ecosystem development.

Your primary focus is to support the ecosystem partners in designing, developing, and realizing viable innovation ecosystems for sustainable digitalization. You facilitate interconnection and networking between ecosystem partners and stakeholders to support knowledge and resource exchange. In addition, you support the realization of innovation ecosystems that can create sustainability-oriented value by co-creating viable business models with ecosystem partners, within and outside the MISD consortium.

What you will be doing:

• Support ecosystem design and development for sustainable edge datacenter solutions
• Support networking and interconnection with stakeholders to identify, engage, and enroll new ecosystem participants from industry, academia, government, and society
• Enable knowledge and resource exchange across ecosystem partners to drive innovation and joint value creation
• Facilitate active dialogue with users and industry, and strategic feedback to the ecosystem to ensure external alignment of the ecosystem
• Support co-creation between interdisciplinary partners to develop innovative solutions that address shared sustainability goals
• Co-develop viable, sustainability-oriented business models for the ecosystem together with ecosystem partners, within and beyond the MISD consortium
• Bring knowledge and insights generated in the project together in an expertise centre and develop a corresponding dissemination program for the MISD project
• Represent the project at various events and coordinate representation activities with other project members

You have a strong interest in sustainability and collaborative innovation in ecosystems. You bring experience in working with diverse stakeholders across sectors – including industry, academia, government, and society – with a proven ability to build networks, facilitate collaboration, and navigate complex, multi-stakeholder environments. In addition, you:

• Have a Master’s degree (or PhD) in innovation management, innovation studies, social design, public administration, or a related field;
• Have an interest in challenges related to sustainability transitions, specifically on supporting actors in these complex, multi-stakeholder processes;
• Demonstrable experience with ecosystem development, multi-stakeholder collaborations, and/or stakeholder engagement;
• Are experienced in co-creation and co-design methods;
• Are familiar with business model development; ideally with a focus on sustainability-oriented approaches;
• Strong interpersonal, facilitation, and communication skills;
• Have excellent organization and project management skills;
• Fluent in English with a strong preference for candidates who can understand and communicate in Dutch;
• Are willing and have proven ability to work independently, but are also an excellent team-player and are excited about working with scientists and practitioners from different backgrounds.

You will become part of the research team working on designing transformations. You will closely collaborate with a post-doc researcher, a PhD-student, three senior researchers, the partners from the project, and the project manager.

Researchers in our section study formal and informal learning of (future) employees, including the use of technology to measure and support professional learning. More broadly, we also study professional learning in relation to the collaboration and innovation processes of professionals, particularly so in multidisciplinary settings and new forms of organizing (such as learning communities or living labs). Our studies often take place in the high-tech, health, and educational sectors with the intention to understand, evaluate, and optimize (inter)professional and (inter)organizational learning, collaboration, and innovation in these various contexts. Increasingly, the settings we study revolve around grand challenges and wicked problems, such as the transitions to green energy and circularity or matters of digital transformation. To contribute to these challenges, we also design and evaluate (technology-based) interventions to optimize professional learning, innovation, and collaboration. In our research group, we combine expertise from a range of disciplines (e.g., educational sciences, psychology, business administration, organization studies, communication science).