Mirjam Ros
Mirjam Ros is an expert in the field of innovation & collaboration in a rapidly changing and complex world. “No one flies solo.” That motto runs like a common thread through the work of Mirjam Ros. She brings together people, ideas, and interests to enable innovative collaboration — from aviation and defense to sustainable industry.
Traditional supply chains no longer work well for innovation. Instead, ecosystems are emerging: dynamic collaborations in which start-ups, scale-ups, knowledge institutions, corporates, and governments jointly develop new solutions. Ecosystems are much more effective at accelerating innovation, but they also demand new skills and mindsets: flexible partnerships, innovation-oriented procurement, balanced IP deals tailored to the context, a growth mindset, courage, and proactive alignment among all players.
Mirjam helps organizations design these collaborations and make them work in practice. She knows what it takes to turn potential friction between start-ups and corporates into valuable synergy and connection — with mutual understanding, clear agreements, trust, and a shared focus on impact.
She combines more than 25 years of experience in commercial, legal, and strategic leadership roles at organizations such as Airbus Netherlands, (GKN) Fokker, and TNO with her current work at nlmtd as a business coach, speaker, and advisor. She helps teams, companies, and governments design innovation partnerships that truly work: complementary, future-proof, and impactful.
Her strength lies in making complex topics understandable, creating clarity and direction, and translating strategy into action. Whether it involves innovation-oriented procurement, IP strategy, or co-creation within ecosystems: Mirjam knows how to connect technology, collaboration, and value creation. She is deeply passionate about this and is frequently invited to speak on these themes.
Mirjam is the author of The Innovation Matrix – a practical and accessible handbook for anyone involved in innovation and collaboration. In the book, she shares a clear framework for building effective innovation systems, finding the right balance between intellectual property and partnership, and turning ideas into lasting impact.
Topics Mirjam frequently speaks about:
– Innovating together in ecosystems
– From technology to impact: organizing innovation in practice
– Collaboration between start-ups and corporates
– IP strategy as a growth accelerator
– Innovation-oriented procurement
– Partnerships and co-creation: collaborating for future resilience
A few examples of Mirjam’s lectures:
Collaboration & Partnering
Mirjam speaks about collaboration and partnering using inspiring real-world examples: what should you consider in advance, and how can you structure collaboration to create impact and/or profit as an organization? What are the pitfalls, and how can you avoid them? What examples exist of visionary organizations — from small to large — that have turned their collaboration into long-term success? What can we learn from them? How can you optimally co-innovate within ecosystems? What stages can be distinguished, and what should you pay attention to?
Target audience: anyone involved in setting up strategic collaborations.
Innovation & Smart Use of Intellectual Property
How can you deal with IP creatively and constructively in joint innovation? The focus is not only on protecting inventions and knowledge, but especially on using IP as a tool to strengthen your activities for greater profit and impact. Mirjam brings her message to life through inspiring examples from international innovation practice.
Target audience: anyone involved in innovation, technology development, strategy, and commercialization.
Simple and Visual Contracts
Mirjam gladly shares her experience from the past ten years in simplifying and visualizing contracts, also known as Legal Design. She advocates bringing back the human dimension in business and in contracts. She wants to eliminate unnecessary and excessive legal jargon, which often leads to too little understanding of mutual rights and obligations and fosters mistrust. We see this both in society — between government and citizens — and in business between parties. This results in major risks for those involved, long and complex communication and negotiations, deteriorated relationships, misunderstanding, mistrust, and conflicts. The solution is to return to the basics: to clearly record only those agreements that matter for proper understanding by the end users of the rules and contractual terms. Who are these end users? They range from citizens, innovators, project managers, and engineers to CEOs of organizations. We must stop creating contracts by lawyers for lawyers — as still happens far too often. Mirjam is happy to explain how to approach this.
Target audience: among others, (legislative) lawyers from government, civil society organizations, and business. But also innovators, engineers, leaders, and anyone involved in innovation.