Foreign companies in Brabant meet each other

The Brabant Investors Day on May 27 in the Administration Building (Provinciehuis) of the Province in Den Bosch was attended by more than 150 representatives of foreign companies located in Brabant. The seminar and network dinner were organized for the third time by the Province of Noord-Brabant and BOM Foreign Investments.

Research intensive region
Roel Spee of IBM Plant Location International informed the attendees about the trends and developments of foreign investments in Northwest Europe. His conclusion: “Brabant is developing to be the most research intensive part of the Netherlands and is in that perspective distinctive in the Netherlands and even Northwest Europe”.

Download his presentation here.

Foreign companies versus local companies
Dr René Olie of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam presented the results of a long-term survey this university does in close cooperation with BOM regarding foreign companies in Brabant. The results show that foreign companies are in a number of ways more innovative than their Dutch counterparts.

Download his presentation here.

Culture
Her Majesty’s Governor, Dr Wim van de Donk also discussed the culture as an important factor in creating a good location climate. Brabant has been nominated as Cultural Capital 2018, which demonstrates that Brabant also plays an international role in this matter. The differences between cultures were illustrated by professor Jen Müller who was the last speaker at the seminar. He showed an interesting (and sometimes hilarious) view on the intercultural differences between the Dutch and the Germans.