Business Development Support

Nikos is a member of the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA). The NBIA is the world's leading organization advancing business incubation and entrepreneurship

According to the law in the Netherlands each university has three different tasks: education, research and service to the community. This last aspect includes knowledge and technology transfer. The process of knowledge and technology transfer should bridge the gap between fundamental research (the core activity of a university and research institutes), applied research (the research that is tailor-made for industry) and society. In practice, the transfer of knowledge obtained by research is easier to the larger companies that can afford to invest in new knowledge and technology and, in most cases, have a research-laboratory of their own, than it is to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). For this reason SMEs are the focus of Business Development Support at Nikos.

At the University of Twente (UT) there has been an active support for business development from the early 80’s; for graduates entering the entrepreneurial path, start-up companies using UT-knowledge, and innovative, -small and large- regionally, nationally and internationally operating companies. Since its origin in 2001, Nikos organizes knowledge development and dissemination of –knowledgeintensive- entrepreneurship. The business development department aims its support activities directly at entrepreneurial processes in the university (both students & researchers) and in the region (private people or SMEs), resulting in new startup firms.