Leyden Labs Highlights Urgent Need to Accelerate Innovation in Nieuwsuur broadcast

December 15, 2025

Leyden Labs Highlights Urgent Need to Accelerate Innovation in Nieuwsuur broadcast

On 13 December 2025, Leyden Labs appeared on Dutch national television in Nieuwsuur. During the broadcast, our CEO Koenraad Wiedhaup and TenneT CEO Manon van Beek discussed the crucial role of innovation in strengthening the Dutch economy and addressed the barriers that prevent promising technologies from scaling rapidly and successfully.

The interview was prompted by the release of the Wennink report, a comprehensive set of recommendations to the Dutch government aimed at accelerating innovation in the Netherlands. The Wennink report underscores that the Netherlands is at a pivotal moment: despite world-class talent and strong innovative capacity, the country needs to strengthen its economic resilience. To remain competitive and safeguard future prosperity, the report calls for action to reduce bureaucracy, accelerate permits and infrastructure, and create the conditions for breakthrough technologies—across sectors such as healthcare, digitalisation, and energy—to scale rapidly.

For biotech scale-ups like Leyden Labs, this message is critical: shortening the path from scientific discovery to societal impact requires decisive governance, clear prioritization, and an innovation ecosystem that provides direction, space, and trust. The report makes clear that accelerating scale-up timelines is not optional, but essential to ensuring the Netherlands remains a country that leads, adapts, and delivers solutions for generations to come.

At Leyden Labs, we are committed to contributing to this acceleration. We are partnering with Leiden Bio Science Park, which is leading the effort to define a national growth strategy for biotechnology in the Netherlands, including specific programs focused on infectious diseases.