The Innofest Method

Accelerating innovation

The above example shows in a nutshell how Innofest works and what the overarching idea of Innofest and the KEM category is experimental environments is: helping entrepreneurs and startups to experiment with their innovative ideas and test them as best as possible in a 'real' situation. This accelerates product development and 'stimulates innovation', with the aim of bringing about or accelerating positive change. 

And Innofest does that, from a sustainable, social-societal point of view. Innofest does not test every new invention. Vermaat: 'The idea for Innofest was once initiated by three festivals. In fact, festivals are mini-societies with food, drinks, sanitary facilities, medical care, security, external energy grid, signage (read: design), a lot of waste and so on. This is the ideal test environment for innovations and prototypes, because it has almost everything you would encounter in a 'real' environment - including different people in different roles. This gives enough opportunities to test different aspects of new products or services, and to extract the assumptions. In addition, all tests can fall directly under the permit that the festival has already applied for.

But only impactful products and services that connect to a world that is becoming more and more sustainable and must become more sustainable. In that respect, it must add value, it must be right. So companies without a clear social contribution do not have to come to us. And artists who want to “test” their work – no matter how special – at festivals do not either; there is no revenue model behind that. Social entrepreneurship is important. Making the world a better place with the help of new products and services, in other words: 'social impact and making money must go hand in hand.'

Friso Visser, Innovation Lead Innofest and creator of the Innofest method, joins in: 'But we would also like to thank developers of ticketing apps, there are already enough of them. For us, it's really about frontrunners in the first years of their existence.'

Innofest receives 175 'serious' applications annually, of which 60 pass the Innofest selection (and 4 are financed by CLICKNL, ed.). Visser lists a number of imaginative examples: 'Semilla Sanitation always does well. That is a fun one, but also a very serious one – from pee to tea, how do you make water or tea from urine? There is a great need for clean drinking water, in refugee camps for example. Clean drinking water is also one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. This could make a huge contribution in that area!

Another one is the E-motion chair, a smart seat cushion that detects discomfort in elderly people with dementia who can no longer express themselves properly. This cushion detects when someone moves in a different way than normal, and can thus warn the nurses to come and take a look. Because you cannot immediately test your first ideas and prototypes with such a vulnerable group as elderly people with dementia, we asked for festival volunteers. In that early stage of technical development, it was also not yet necessary to work with the real target group.

Another one is Desire, a beer brand that wants to make sexual harassment a topic of discussion – with labels that say things like 'With such a short skirt you'll provoke it' or 'Touch me with your horny hands'. This is really interesting, because they do this by means of alcohol: most harassment happens under the influence.

A final, and one of the most successful products we tested is Kumasi, which is made from the pulp around the cocoa bean – only the cocoa bean is used to make chocolate. In this way, cocoa farmers, who earn far too little, now have extra income with something that is normally wasted: delicious tropical cocoa fruit juice. Kumasi is now for sale at Albert Heijn.'