Failed civic participation
Through citizen participation, the municipality of Amsterdam wanted to make policy-making more democratic. The municipality made plans for all sorts of subjects on which citizens could express their opinions, but citizens responded very little. They do not feel that they are really allowed to decide, but are only there to suggest ideas.
MEE Samen wants to help turn healthcare around
The aim of the MEE Samen project is to use social networks to strengthen an organisation's care. An attempt was made to find an organisation that was willing to embark on the experiment of using social networks (in a different way). Unfortunately, this was not successful. There were positive reactions, but it was seen as something interesting for the long term and not for now. Time, money and the unfamiliarity of working with social networks were important barriers.
Useless solar cell machine may start improving batteries
Using a device, the ECN research center wanted to produce solar cells. The device could vaporize silicon onto solar cells, but unfortunately not with a density of the silicon that was high enough. As a result, the device lay gathering dust, until Christian Rood came across it and saw how useful the device could be for producing batteries.