Kickstart Europe 2023 will be opened by Stijn Grove and our Chairman of the Day, Paul Iske. Paul is a professor of Open Innovation & Business Venturing at Maastricht University and the founder of the Institute for Brilliant Failures. His mission is to make organizations smarter, more innovative, and more entrepreneurial. Iske believes failure is an important part of innovation. To realize new insights and ideas organizations must fail at certain points. A failure can turn brilliant when organizations try to do something meaningful with unforeseen outcomes. 

During his opening talk Paul will address the statement “Everybody wants and uses the internet, yet nobody wants data centers.” This statement will catalyze a talk about how the industry can use dialog to change the negative perception that the sector experiences. As a sector we often feel misunderstood and mislabeled as controversial, as a result, we feel the need to defend ourselves. Paul Iske will discuss how this perception can be influenced by a positive dialogue and how we, as an industry, should move forward.