SHFT is an open network organisation that focuses on identifying, creating and strengthening natural innovations and preparing them for the market.
What are natural innovations?
Natural innovations are innovations that are inspired by nature and that make use of principles, materials and/or technologies from nature.
How do we do that?
We either look for a solution to an existing problem or we re-formulate the problem so that we come to a totally different solution (shift of paradigm).
We describe the direction of the solution in a product concept that we then enrich with knowledge, opinions, insights, theories, calculations, research, etc., in order to prepare the concept for the market.
Why?
On the basis of our education and experience, we have a natural affinity with innovation and nature. That is where our strength and passion lies. Thanks to our background we have the necessary knowledge and a relevant network so that we can create links that may be less evident to others. Besides, we know – based on actual practice – that we can still learn a lot from nature and that nature still holds many solutions to social problems.
What do we do?
We identify or create promising concepts, strengthen them and prepare them for the market. We make sure that promising concepts get the chance that they deserve.
We strengthen promising ideas by:
- Working together with others and inspiring each other;
- Mobilizing relevant networks: we bring together innovators, scientists, visionaries, creative people, engineers and practical people around an idea and thus make use of as much available knowledge and thinking power as possible;
- Linking worlds that normally have no or hardly any contact with each other and getting them to work together;
- Creating unexpected links with other fields of attention, thus enabling unexpected solutions and applications to arise;
- Building a natural-scientific foundation under the concept, so that it can be further developed and tested;
- Creating contacts with financers that are interested in supporting this type of innovative concepts and have confidence in our approach;
- Thoroughly scanning market opportunities.