Mirjam Ros
Mirjam Ros is an expert in the field of innovation and collaboration in a rapidly changing and complex world. Innovating can no longer be done alone. Therefore, finding the right partners and setting up smart and well-thought-out collaborations are crucial for the success, profit, and impact of any organization. Mirjam regularly gives lectures on this topic at (international) conferences and for individual organizations.
It is Mirjam’s mission to help organizations – from small to large – establish smart and effective collaborations. She focuses on innovation models, partner selection, ecosystems, and strategic management of intellectual property (IP). By simplifying processes as much as possible and strengthening the roles of various parties, collaboration can lead to the development of better, faster, and more innovative products and services.
She has over 25 years of hands-on international experience in supporting and setting up collaboration, innovation, and technology development, with 15 years in leadership and management roles. In 2024, she joined nlmtd, the Innovation & Impact Agency in Amsterdam, where she works on innovation, sustainability, and transitions. She also coaches startups, scale-ups, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in various (international) accelerator programs.
Previously, she worked at Airbus Netherlands (over eight years as a management team member), TNO Industry & Technology, and Stork Fokker (now GKN). She is also a Fellow at World Commerce & Contracting and a member of their Global Advisory Board. At Airbus Netherlands, she led the visualization and simplification of contracts to optimize collaboration within the ecosystem of small and large parties. For innovation and IP, strategic alignment with the business determined which rights were needed for mutual success and protection in execution and commercialization, making collaboration with partners smoother and easier.
Mirjam studied Public Administration at the University of Twente and later earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Business Law from the University of Leiden while working. In 2007, she wrote her thesis on successful IP models in Open Innovation for her studies.
Her thesis was the foundation for the later book The Innovation Matrix, co-authored with Deepika Jeyakodi. The book explains how innovation and co-creation go hand in hand successfully. They make the complex subject matter accessible in a unique and approachable way for everyone involved in innovation, even without in-depth knowledge of IP but who wants to handle it strategically and practically.
Examples of Mirjam’s lectures include:
Collaboration & Partnering
Mirjam speaks about collaboration and partnering using compelling real-life examples. She discusses what to consider beforehand and how to set up collaborations to make an impact and/or profit as an organization. What are the pitfalls and how can they be avoided? Which visionary organizations, from small to large, have managed to make their collaboration a long-term success? What can we learn from them? How can you co-innovate optimally in ecosystems? What phases can be distinguished, and what should you pay attention to?
Audience: anyone involved in setting up strategic collaborations.
Innovation & Smart Use of Intellectual Property
How can you handle IP creatively and constructively in joint innovation? The focus is not only on protecting inventions and knowledge but also on using IP as an instrument to strengthen your activities for more profit and impact. Mirjam makes her story lively and practical with inspiring examples from international innovation practice.
Audience: anyone involved in innovation, technology development, strategy, and commercialization.
Simple and Visual Contracts
Mirjam shares her experiences from the past ten years with simplifying and visualizing contracts, also known as Legal Design. She advocates for bringing back the human dimension in business and contracts. She wants to move away from unnecessary and excessive legal jargon, which often leads to a lack of understanding of mutual rights and obligations and creates distrust. This issue is seen both in society between government and citizens and in business between parties. It results in significant risks for those involved, long and complex communication and negotiations, deteriorated relationships, misunderstanding, distrust, and conflicts. The solution is to return to basics: clearly documenting only those agreements that are important for a good understanding by the end users of the rules and contractual arrangements. Who are these end users? They range from citizens, innovators, project managers, engineers to CEOs of organizations. We need to stop creating contracts by lawyers for lawyers, as still happens too often. Mirjam explains how to approach this.
Audience: among others, (legislative) lawyers from government, social organizations, and businesses. But also innovators, engineers, leaders, and everyone involved in innovation.