Reduce time to market
All our technology programs bring together many industry leaders and technology pioneers, each an expert in his or her field. Working together, these program teams can turn ideas into real solutions quickly, allowing our partners to move much more quickly from concept to product.
By participating in Holst Centre programs, Huntsman was able to demonstrate the world’s first application of OLED signage devices. During the 2010 24h Le Mans race, a car from the French Oreca race team displayed the Araldite® logo – a brand which belongs to Huntsman – by a flexible Holst Centre OLED device integrated on the back of the race car mirror. Although it was still a ‘one-off’ experiment, it illustrates that the combined effort of all the partners in the Holst Centre open innovation program (and in the EU FP7 Fast2Light program) can lead to world-leading product introductions.
Another fruitful collaboration example is the one with InnoPhysics, a startup from the Vision Dynamics group. Thanks to a funding program of the Dutch government to tackle the economic crisis, the expertise of Dutch startup InnoPhysics was accommodated in the Holst Centre program on Large-Area Printing. In a joint effort InnoPhysics and Holst Centre have shown the feasibility of surface tension contrast patterning and printing as a valuable technology for the production of energy efficient OLEDs. A successful joint concept validation has led to a collaboration to further develop the method and explore a number of new processes to create patterns of functional materials on flexible substrates. Based upon the initial results, InnoPhysics and Holst Centre are now exploring the go-to-market strategy of this technology.
These are just two concrete examples of how collaboration at Holst Centre can lead to more efficient R&D.