Meet Jeroen van der Aa and Davide Parrilli – profiles of the month

Jeroen van der Aa and Davide Parilli

Jeroen van der Aa – Design, innovation, and European policy ecosystems

Jeroen van der Aa trained as an Industrial Designer at TU Delft, with a focus on business and innovation management related to sustainability. After graduating, he worked in the product planning department of DAF Trucks in Eindhoven before joining the innovation and business development consulting firm, now known as Bax. Alongside fellow industrial designers, they advocated for the role of designers in open innovation in the Netherlands and Europe.

Later, he took on a management consulting role at ABN Amro Bank, focusing on the digitization of internal services. His career continued at the Syntens Innovation Center, which supported innovation in SME companies, before its integration into the Dutch Chamber of Commerce.

“I had specific focus on improving entrepreneurship, business development, digitization and sustainability in built environment ecosystems in the Randstad region with a specific focus to architects and installation sector”, says Jeroen van der Aa.

He was asked to return to TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering to set up the office for developing European collaborative research and innovation projects.

“In these projects we can give design researchers a driving role in innovation in the fields of health, circular economy, mobility, smart cities, manufacturing, AI and social innovation. I had an active role from the beginning in developing the Creative Futures consortium bid for the EIT Culture & Creativity together with several partners from what later became ekip”, says Jeroen van der Aa, who is a work package leader of WP 4/5/6 and part of the steering group.

Jeroen van der Aa’s role is to oversee the data collection progress of the work package and ensure alignment with other work packages.

“I process feedback to refine our methodology. My experience with Dutch and European innovation projects in the design sector helps me connect with relevant stakeholders, projects, and policies”, he says.

Davide Parrilli – Policy areas, CCIs, and innovation research

Davide Parrilli founded and managed a number of Cultural and Creative Industry initiatives in the field of design and art. One, Beleza Design & Art, is a platform promoting Belgian design and designers abroad, particularly in Brazil. The other, ars fabricandi, was a maison d’édition of exquisite design objects created by several creative minds.

“My focus in ekip is on the identification and prioritisation of policy areas using a methodology that we developed for ekip. Next to that, I am also involved in the research of policy areas that leads to the Policy Labs”, explains Davide Parrilli, who serves as WP 4/5/6 Deputy.

Shared challenges for CCIs and innovation policy

A significant amount of work on innovation in the CCIs is already being done across Europe. According to Jeroen van der Aa, ekip should focus on mapping and connecting the most impactful initiatives, amplifying them rather than duplicating existing efforts.

“I think ekip should focus on topics which potentially have the most impact, are not well covered yet and if possible open up new unknown perspectives. If this is well transferred to both the sector and policy makers, I am confident we can further boost the role of the CCI sector in European innovation, wellbeing and prosperity”.

Davide Parrilli highlights two persistent challenges facing CCIs: access to funding and access to markets.

“In my experience, the main challenges for CCIs are access to funding and to market. Often big investments are required that small CCIs struggle to collect”, he explains.