CELL

In September 2009 the innovation program “Creative Xcellerator Noordvleugel” was lanced.
This two year running program is a partnership of the Hogeschool Utrecht (HU), the School of Arts Utrecht (HKU) and the Task Force Innovation Region Utrecht (TFI). The program addresses the innovation and professional capacities of Utrecht as a creative breeding ground, through collaboration and knowledge sharing between business, education and research, and supporting creative talents to become entrepreneurs and make their business more noticeable and profitable.

As part of the Creative Xcellerator program the HU is developing and promoting Creative Experience Learning Labs (CELL). CELL stimulates the collaboration between students, tutors, researchers and (creative) entrepreneurs. They work together on concept development, product and service innovations and business implementation in different projects. Co-creation and open innovation are key concepts. Results of the CELL projects will include a number of creative start-ups, product innovations, market introductions, publications and sustainable partnerships. 

To facilitate these activities five innovation spaces, the learning labs, are installed. The Labs are situated at three different HU faculties: Communication & Journalism (Crossmedialab: www.crossmedialab.nl), Life Sciences & Technology (Concept Space) and Economics & Management (InnBus-lab). Furthermore there are two labs situated at the locations Media Park, were there is a close collaboration with iMMovator (www.immovator.nl), and on the Nijverheidsweg, in cooperation with the ProtoSpace Foundation (www.protospace.nl) and NOVU (www.novu.nl).

New ways of working will be tested in different projects. Some examples of typical CELL projects are:
- Pitching Innovation Game: a Dragon’s Den based game in which teams ‘transform’ new (technological) developments into sound business proposals.
- Creative Pressure Cooker: people from various working fields are brought together and are asked to come up with ideas, in a very short period of time, to innovate each other’s products or services.
- InCompany Lab: a creative team will come over to stay within the company for a week. The problem the company is facing, will be looked at from several different angles.
- Timer: ideas, concepts and prototypes need space and nourishment to grow. Companies from the creative industries have often enough business ideas and concepts, but they often remain on the shelf for reasons of capacity, insufficient knowledge, et cetera. In a Timer project these ideas are taken up and developed into a prototype.

On several websites (including www.hu.nl, www.taskforceinnovatie.nl and www.creativexcellerator.nl, www.xpertcmkb.nl) the projects, meetings and presentations will be announced. Any company, organisation, research group or educational institute can participate in the CELL projects and benefit from the project results and the knowledge acquired. 

For further information pleas contact Nathalie Waser, project manager CELL: nathatlie.waser@hu.nl.


Creative Xcellerator is part of the ‘Pieken in de Delta’ (Peaks in the Delta) program and is subsidised by the city of Utrecht and the ministry of Economic Affairs