PortXL and Buccaneer talk innovation, start-ups and the importance of social skills

Carolien Vat-Sandee, director and co-founder of PortXL, and Seriena Bal, managing director of Buccaneer, tell us all about the importance of start-ups for established players, what makes a successful innovation, their leadership and accelerator programs, and more.

According to Bal, research on innovation has shown that a successful innovation consists of 25% of technical skills and 75% of social skills, and becoming more entrepreneurial in this sense is the way to go, although it requires a lot of effort.

“We believe that innovation will impact both the economy and ecology in a positive way, and we do that through start-ups. We search for start-ups around the world and we bring them to Rotterdam and connect them to the existing market,” Vat-Sandee said. “We try to bridge the request from these big corporations, innovation needs, to solutions that start-ups and scale-ups have.”