Innovation Accounting

Dan Toma comes from an entrepreneurial background. He has been involved with Hi-Tech and internet start-ups across the world and is an entrepreneurship community leader in Europe. In recent years, he started focusing more on enterprise innovation management, specifically on the changes large organizations need to make to allow for disruptive new ventures to be built in a corporate setting. He has worked with companies like Deutsche Telekom, Bosch, Jaguar Land Rover and Allianz. A big proponent of the ecosystem approach to innovation, Dan has also worked with various government bodies in Asia and Europe, helping developing national innovation ecosystems and implement national innovation strategies. The work experience gathered from the public and private sector has been translated into various experiential courses that Dan has delivered for universities worldwide.

Esther Gons is co-founder and investor of NEXT.amsterdam, helping startups from ideas phase to a working business model. She has developed the entrepreneurship course for the Communication Multimedia and Design program at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She is also an international speaker who organized the first StartupBus Europe tour in 2011 and has acted as lead mentor at Rockstart Accelerator for the past 6 years. As a visual spatial thinker she was part of bringing the lean startup movement to the Netherlands. Esther has mentored over 100 startups so far and still acts as advisor for many of them. Connecting corporates to the startup ecosystem is important to NEXT, so Esther is also frequently involved in corporate innovation.