Right now, Eindhoven and the Brainport region are ascendant, says Klaas Dijkhoff, and that’s a good thing for the Netherlands as a whole. But adjusting to an epochal shift in economic power is challenging psychologically and in real terms.

Dijkhoff should know. He’s a behavioral scientist and former member of the Dutch Parliament. He's also a Brabant native, with a solid substantive view of where Eindhoven has been historically and where it is going.

Finally, Dijkhoff is an Eindhoven booster, helping reframe the conversation around an innovation center in a conflicted relationship/rivalry with the rest of the country.

In a 30-minute interview during the tech conference High Tech Next last week, Dijkhoff took High Tech Campus Communications Manager Ingelou Stol through the intricacies and nuances of the complicated relationship between Eindhoven and the rest of the Netherlands – where it’s been, where it’s going and how it can be improved.

Historically, Amsterdam and Rotterdam have been the Dutch economic powerhouses. “Then there was little … not even a village,” Dijkhoff said of Eindhoven, noting it was only 100 years ago the region went from being farmlands with a small town to a large industrial area. Eindhoven’s foundational tech company Philips first started in Breda, “then they heard about this empty factory in Eindhoven and that’s how it all started.”

Now, ASML, NXP and other Eindhoven-based companies dominate the global tech industry.

“It’s so clever what you do here that people don’t even understand it,” Dijkhoff said. The rest of the Netherlands has factories. The Rotterdam port is full of containers. Visible signs of economic activity. Visible and understandable.  

"But if you ask people about Brainport, they say, ‘ASML, they make chips,' " Dijkhoff said. "If they think that, let them think that. At least they have some idea useful things are happening here. We just need to make it more visible.

“We need to take it to the people.”

Brabant’s relatively new-found affluence is drawing tens of thousands of people to Eindhoven and the rest of the province, and the national government just budgeted 1.6 billion euros to upgrade and expand Eindhoven’s infrastructure, including the transportation grid, to cope.

Even that won’t be enough, Dijkhoff said, because more people mean greater pressure on resources, including housing and healthcare: 

Brainport is increasing in size right now. We’re making a big step. But the next big step cannot be accommodated in the region physically anymore. The construct of how we do things is so successful we need to expand.

Healthcare is a crucial part. But Dijkhoff says more places in The Netherlands need to be “Brainported.” They all need Brainport treatment.

“We have to ditch the last part of regional modesty," he said. "It’s not ‘invest in Brainport’ because it’s good for the country.’ It’s that the rest of the country should copy this model and we make the entire Netherlands Brainport."

Okay, he added, Amsterdam can remain the capital. “Those tourists have to go somewhere. But the rest needs to be Brainported.”

That will take integrating the surrounding regions so they can feel the benefits and the pride of region. It’s easier to be proud of Brainport if you’re from this region than if you’re from Rotterdam," he noted.

Eindhoven is now successful enough that “it’s not only admired, but it’s copied and stolen from,” Dijkhoff said. “Don’t underestimate your importance.”

Interview Ingelou Stol and Klaas Dijkhoff in the auditorium of the Conference Center High Tech Campus