LIMITS TO GROWTH?

Mobility and transport are at the very center of our socio-economic fabric. They underpin social connections and facilitate access to goods and services. In today’s world, mobility by air, road and water is all about efficiencies, speed, interconnectivity and accessibility. How can the industry adapt and enhance today’s already-stretched mobility system for it to respond to the increased demands? And more importantly how can mobility be reinvigorated for it to become truly sustainable?

The Dutch Schiphol Airport is an example of a European mainport that is heavily under pressure to ramp-up its efforts on sustainability, quality of life ánd work. For this to work a near future decoupling of growth ánd its negative consequences is needed.

In Schiphol’s most recently published vision 2050, Schiphol made quite a vulnerable statement. The Royal Schiphol Group identified several grand social challenges that need to be resolved in the coming decade for the company to have a future raison d'être.

These social and environmental challenges are extremely complex, systemic dilemma’s which the organization can't fix all by themselves or instantly. It requires effort on both incremental, disruptive ánd radical innovation.

Innovations in both technology and organization are essential to make mobility sustainable. Cutting-edge technologies create opportunities to transform the mobility system e.g. autonomous devices, ultralight materials, unmanned aircraft innovations, hyperloop, artificial intelligence, biometrics, robotics, new airplane designs, different air fields, alternative fuels or even electric aircrafts. The key question is how to initiate this crucial innovation and transformation in such a high reliability industry where safety and thus protocol is key?

Therefor Schiphol turns to entrepreneurs by using their vision ‘destination 2050’ - with the ambitious goal to become climate-neutral - as an open invitation: calling all innovators. The airport will open its well gated platform for more open-innovation and co-creation to find new breakthrough solutions together, which they will then share and roll-out globally.