Innovation
-
AI Coding Tools Are Only Exposing Your Weak Software Engineering Discipline
AI Coding is the end of pretending your engineering process is mature. The pitch versus the reality Every vendor demo looks the same. A developer types a vague instruction. The AI returns clean, working code in seconds. The crowd applauds. Another slide promises “10x productivity.” What the slide does not show: the codebase those snippets…
-
The Timeline Paradox: Decoupling Industrial IoT Data from Physical Assets
How modular data architecture and open standards put asset owners back in control There is a structural issue in the market for data-driven asset management that is rarely stated explicitly: the supplier of your asset also wants to become the supplier of your data. That may be understandable from the supplier’s business model. But it…
-
When Siemens Energy Must Choose: Your AI Data Center or the Grid That Powers It
The energy transition has a bottleneck that rarely makes headlines. Not a shortage of wind turbines or solar panels. Not a lack of capital or political will. A structural shortage of power transformers, switchgear, and high-voltage direct current (HVDC) connections. The physical components that move electricity from where it is generated to where it is…
-
The Power Grid Does Not Know What You Know
The Dutch electricity grid is congested. That diagnosis is no longer controversial. What remains poorly understood is why the flexibility that could relieve that congestion is sitting idle behind millions of meters, owned by businesses and households who have neither the information, the incentive, nor the trust to put it to use. The problem is…
-
The Scary Takeover: The Day Your AI Tool Became Your Boss
We love talking about AI transformation. Keynotes, roadmaps, pilots, proof-of-concepts. Big words, bold ambitions. Every conference has a slot for it. Every board agenda has a line item. And yet, for all the noise we make about AI strategy, the most consequential shift isn’t happening in the strategy decks. It’s happening in the background, in…
-
TenneT, The Backbone of the Economy Under Strain, But Cannot Be Allowed to Break
What TenneT’s 2025 Annual Report Tells Us About the Dutch High-Voltage Grid: the Backbone on Which Our Digital Economy Rests. Beneath our digital and industrial prosperity lies the Dutch high-voltage grid: a national infrastructure already running at its limits, while the true peak of the energy transition is yet to come. That tension is largely…
-
Your Innovation Pilots Are a Graveyard.
Time to Stop, Bury them with a distinct Ceremony. Most innovation pilots in large organisations are not experiments. They are expensive theatre. A team is assembled, a budget is allocated, a vendor is selected, and a steering committee is formed. Six months later, a slide deck lands in front of a board that politely nods.…
-
Why Slow Data Still Makes Businesses Rely on Gut Feeling
We have spent the last decade building structured, data-driven systems. Our operational environments are now filled with automation, dashboards, and real-time alerts. In logistics, finance, and IT, decisions are increasingly made by algorithms or are at least heavily supported by them. And yet, when it comes to day-to-day tactical decisions, we still fall back on…
-
How I Embrace Failure: The Unseen Path to Success
Looking at my experience, my failures stand out in my memory. It is a biological principle to take painful moments (like a failure) and store these in a prominent place in our memory to prevent a repeat. But these fiascos are also valuable lessons. In the ever-evolving landscape of technology and innovation, the road to…
-
PowerWeb Lecture: Building IOT Capabilities for energy transition and digital twin at scale
Abstract: The energy transition in the Netherlands will effectively migrate energy towards less reliable sources like wind and solar. Next to this, the production of energy will be more and more decentralized, and gas will be replaced by alternatives for domestic heating. The increased usage of electric vehicles, heat pumps and home batteries will have…
-
I busted 12 Myths about IoT
Internet of Things (IoT) is for many technology enthusiasts the single most important thing that has ever happened. The impact of this technology on our lives is growing close to mythical proportions. Working in this industry for years has made me encounter some of the myths and irrational expectations of IoT. Some of these myths are…
-
What can we learn from the Amish view on technology?
Is that new? I want to try? Have you seen this new feature? I want that too. We are all addicted to innovative technology, gadgets, and new features. Is this a good thing? I recently listened to the BBC show The Digital Human. They talked about the attitude of the Amish People towards technology. And…
-
Legacy IT and Technical Debt: What Should We Do With Our Cauliflower Automation?
If, like me, you have been working in IT for a while, you may recognise this: An organisation has a system that has been built a while ago and is up and running. However, after a while, the requirements change. Users discover that they want something extra, or that a specific piece of functionality needs…
-
How I Use the Dark Side for Innovation
In my post about the Rebel’s Manifesto, I mentioned the Dark Side. That triggered a few questions. How would you actually use the “dark side” in innovation? Is frustration useful? Can irritation lead to better ideas? Or is this just a convenient excuse to behave like Darth Vader with a product roadmap? This article sheds…
-
Who is responsible when Artificial Intelligence fails?
I am a heavy user of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. I often do not realize I am using them and, like most of us, never think about the things that can go wrong. All day long we use Siri as our voice-controlled personal assistant. We rely on systems like Waze for navigation, which not only…
-
Fuel Your Innovation: The Rebel’s Manifesto
Innovation is not an automated, neat, step-by-step process. Being innovative requires a different mental mode. You need space to be inspired, investigate, discover, experiment, and sometimes accidentally fall into a good idea. The old saying still holds true: if you want to discover something new, you have to do something unexpected. That sounds useful, but…