Photo of some Eindhoven student teams and the spin-offs created based on them, © Bart van Overbeeke

Make sure to continue the debate and join us at the "From Campus to Deep Tech Founder: How Can Student Ventures Have an Impact?” seminar on January 31 at 11:00 at sTARTUp Day to hear from Madis Talmar as well as two other guests:

• Ghita Wallin, Founder of MIMIR Fellows, will share her understanding of how the Finnish youth contribute to Finland’s deep tech success and what Estonia can learn;
• Katriin Kristmann, CEO of Estonian Student Satellite, will talk about the reality of managing a large student team in Estonia.

Madis Talmar, as an Estonian working in Eindhoven University of Technology as the head of their Student Teams program, what can you tell us about the main lessons from working within the deep tech ecosystem in Eindhoven?

The Dutch society is in many ways quite similar to Estonia. Eindhoven specifically also had a brutal restart at the beginning of the nineties with several of its hallmark multinationals, such as Philips and DAF Trucks, failing, leading to high unemployment and a general economic slump. In that era, they started rather explicitly employing the triple helix idea of fostering economic and social development through interactions of science, industry and (local) government.

These sides came together and agreed that they should never let the local economy collapse again.

An example still remembered is that suddenly, unemployed scientists and engineers from tech companies were hired in bulk by the university with a support scheme provided by the government. Many of these people still work in or with the university and have made a significant contribution. In the last two decades or so, the university has given the society back tens of thousands of graduates and massive intellectual property contributions to key industries. A sense of commonly held responsibility in the society is still strongly upheld in the Eindhoven region by all sides of the helix and many people are very eager to contribute to the success of new interesting ideas.

In this sense, the main learning for me has been that long-term success is a matter of building and maintaining an internally reinforcing system. It takes a while to build, but once it works it is a gift that keeps on giving. I sense that in Estonia there is perhaps more drive to reap short-term benefits over long-term system-building.

In a small way, an example of the systems view is also the program that I run at Eindhoven University of Technology - the so-called Student Teams program. The program is part of the regional development strategy for talent creation and economic prosperity more broadly. In this sense we run our own little triple helix: on the one side, more than 400 local companies sponsor and partner with our Student Teams; on the other side, the roughly 550 annual participants in Student Teams shortly enter the workforce, mostly as engineers. There is a common understanding that developing the skills of students will absolutely benefit everyone in the region and help attract new talent into the region. Recently, the provincial government stepped up their support with a dedicated subsidy scheme of nearly 3 MEUR for technological innovation done by Student Teams.

You’ve suggested elsewhere that startups are a side effect of talent development. Could you elaborate on why focusing on engineering talent as the primary driver of innovation should often be prioritized over the traditional focus on starting new startups as the goal?

I think the best system has excellent ways to support both engineering talent development as well as provide explicit startup support. That said, in my opinion, the second is much more impactful if the first is well-covered.

In our experience, despite the focus in our student teams being rather clearly on learning and talent development, something like 20 significant startups have emerged and they’ve created more than 1000 jobs in the region.

Tinkering to learn absolutely can lead to venture creation. But an engineering talent development focus has several other benefits yet.

The most important one is that deep tech assumes an actual technological advantage. One cannot “fake it till you make it” or rely on business acumen alone, such as clever marketing, since the basis of competing in the technology field is generally the performance or cost of the technology itself. For instance, a battery technology either is on an R&D path to a certain energy density or it isn’t. In deep tech domains, you often have a competent buyer, and you lose legitimacy very quickly if you do not deliver on your promises in terms of the technology itself. This means that engineering talent is non-optional. Design and business competence can be added to substantially enhance engineering achievements, of course.

A second reason to focus on talent development is that in a knowledge economy most sustained technology innovation inevitably takes place in existing entities, such as in scale-ups and corporations. If a local company has “found a promising fish in the pond”, it’s a high priority for the country/region to have a source of talent to develop their technology, raise substantial capital, compete internationally, and ultimately bring prosperity to its home base.

Why do you believe engineering talent is particularly crucial in creating impactful innovation? Could other disciplines, like design or business, be equally important?

In most areas, innovation is indeed greatly enhanced by interdisciplinarity. That idea is also one of the foundations of the talent development programs in Eindhoven. Nevertheless, which disciplines and in which proportion are involved, depends on the aim. For example, consumer goods and deep tech innovations might benefit from a different mix.

It’s also an interesting question whether synergy should be found by bringing a variety of people together. Or should engineers themselves develop their skills across the board, to be the so-called T-shaped or π-shaped engineers who have deep competence in 1-2 tech areas, but further capabilities and appreciation across a broad range of other fields? At Eindhoven University of Technology, our programs are set up to target both, although team-based interdisciplinarity is still more commonly employed.

In cultivating engineering talent, should we focus on creating highly specialized experts or rather multidisciplinary individuals? What are the trade-offs?

Both profiles are clearly valuable, just for different purposes. In this sense, I would estimate that society probably fares best if a STEM choice is overall preferentially supported, but at the same time individuals can exercise great freedom in developing their own profile within it. Here, the ability for individuals to test different roles in an extracurricular capacity such as in a Student Team is an excellent way to learn more about themselves quite early on.

In my work, I often see students of serious tech fields like applied physics and electrical engineering find a real calling in managing people or business processes which is a great thing for them to discover.

Engineering can be perceived as intimidating or inaccessible. How can we make it more appealing and attract a broader range of people to this field?

For one, I think it is relevant to meaningfully show young people that engineering is pretty much the main way they can really change the world for the better instead of expecting ‘someone to do something’. It’s a message which hopefully resonates since it can outline quite a clear path by which a person can matter and have undeniable potential. Concerned about security? You can personally contribute to defense technologies. Concerned about the Global south? You can personally contribute to educational, energy, healthcare solutions, etc. to make a change there. Concerned about climate change? You can contribute to making more sustainable technologies cheap enough to be implemented without them being a societal burden.

That said, it is true that work in cultivating such thinking, as well as making STEM more accessible starts much before the university level. In that sense, an educational system is built ground-up and it remains vital to induce talent first to teaching relevant background subjects (= math, physics, biology, chemistry). That remains a formidable challenge in Estonia, as well as in The Netherlands.


What role should corporations, governments, and educational institutions play in creating a pipeline of engineering talent? Should they collaborate more closely, and if so, how?

I believe commercial entities understand quite well that the basis of sustained activities is the inflow of great talent tomorrow, as well as in ten years. The question is how much they can contribute now and at what level.

Besides the obvious, pulling talent from certain university curricula, would a company, for example, afford a day for its employed engineers to teach at local schools, or would they sponsor organizations like Student Teams where students learn by tinkering with technology? These activities might not benefit the company immediately, but they certainly benefit society in the long-term.

From the government, I would hope for stable and supportive conditions. For example, an understanding that being successful as a knowledge economy first assumes that you have enough people, that they are exceptionally well educated throughout the levels of education, and that people grow up with the aspiration and sense of shared responsibility to contribute to their society. These three topics seem to come together at the level of a long-term vision and leadership which politicians could provide.

Is the current education system aligned with producing the engineering talent needed to drive innovation, or does it require significant change? If so, what are the key areas for reform?

My main concern for now is that there are not enough kids to uphold a strong educational system, be it STEM-oriented or otherwise. Demography is destiny as Comte said. In some sense all other issues are secondary. Nevertheless, to speak specifically about tertiary engineering education, then our experience supports the further use of authentic learning environments, such as when students work on real-life challenges in a somewhat uncontrolled environment. Our university is implementing challenge-based learning in both curricular and extracurricular activities in Student Teams. We believe students with an extensive challenge-based group work learning background are particularly employable in the technology sector.

What emerging fields within engineering should be prioritized to meet future innovation demands? How do we inspire students to enter these cutting-edge areas?

In my experience, preferential focus on one or a few technological areas pays great dividends since a small place like Estonia, or indeed the so-called Brainport Eindhoven region which has ~800,000 inhabitants, would stretch itself very thin trying to excel at too many things. If you think of international competitiveness, it will probably not matter much which technology area it is as long as you are at the world-class level, since there’s enough market in all contemporary technology areas. In the Brainport Eindhoven region all sorts of technology are developed, but ultimately semiconductors and photonics are the two areas where our tech companies like ASML, NXP and Thermo Fischer Scientific are world-class, and that our university prioritizes specifically. That said, for society to work properly – for example, to develop a viable energy strategy or safeguard cyber security – obviously all fields of engineering are relevant.